Weapons of Mass Destruction

Weapons of Mass Destruction
The American WMD programs remain cloaked in secrecy, yet a substantial number of revealing documents have been quietly declassified since the late 1970's. Put together, they tell the story of how America secretly built up the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The almost 2,400 documents in this collection explain the role these weapons played in a series of world crises, how they shaped U.S. and NATO defense and foreign policy during the Cold War, and what incidents and nearly averted disasters happened. Moreover, they shed a light on the dreadful human and ecological legacy left by decades of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons manufacturing and testing in the U.S. and overseas.

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AMERICA'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) PROGRAMS AND THE LEGACY THEY LEFT BEHIND

1945-2017

By Matthew M. Aid, August 2017

“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.”

General Omar N. Bradley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1949-1953)

Table of contents

Introduction

This document collection has been compiled for the simple purpose of helping researchers students bypass the vast amount of secrecy surrounding the subject of how the U.S. built up the world's largest arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons during the Cold War.

It is worth remembering that at its peak in 1967, the U.S. nuclear arsenal consisted of 31,255 nuclear weapons with an aggregate destructive power of 12,786 megatons, which was more than sufficient to wipe out all of humanity several hundred times over. But that was not all. Also hidden away in earth-covered storage bunkers spread throughout the U.S. as well as Germany and Okinawa were over 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, as well as thousands of specially designed bombs that could be filled in short order with even deadlier biological warfare agents, such as weaponized versions of the anthrax virus and tularense (rabbit fever bacteria).

But amongst the worst of our human foibles is our capacity to quickly forget. The U.S. today still maintains a huge and massively destructive nuclear weapons stockpile, a fact which we have largely forgotten today because of the post-9/11 focus on terrorism. Since 9/11, reporting by the mainstream American news media about this country's still massive nuclear weapon's arsenal has been almost nonexistent, and scholarly historical works on America's Cold War Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs have declined dramatically in the U.S. Today, arguably the best research on America's Cold War era work on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is being done by European and Canadian scholars, not Americans.

That is not to say that there is not already a rich body of work available for researchers and scholars to consult based on detailed research in various archives in the U.S. and Europe prior to 9/11, many of which are listed in this collection's bibliography section. Since the end of World War II, hundreds of books have been written about America's nuclear weapons, but very few of the authors who wrote these works availed themselves of the declassified documents that the U.S. government began declassifying in the late 1970s, preferring instead to depend on interviews or the use of secondary sources for their source materials.

Far fewer serious books have been written about America's chemical and biological warfare programs, for the simple reason that nuclear weapons were rightly deemed to be far more important in U.S. defense and foreign policy during the Cold War than chemical and biological weapons. But also because chemical and biological weapons were, to an important degree, treated as being far more secret than nuclear weapons, in large part because these weapons were widely viewed (even inside the Pentagon) as being more odious than nukes.

The U.S. Government's Fixation with WMD Secrecy

But the real threat to the future of scholarly research on the American nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs is the U.S. government's continuing effort to remove from public circulation declassified documents about these programs from the shelves of the U.S. National Archives. For the past twenty years, a small team of security personnel from the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, masquerading as “declassification specialists,” have been quietly combing through the publicly-available files of the U.S. National Archives research facility in College Park, Maryland, pulling declassified documents from the shelves and reclassifying them as Secret because under the U.S. government's current tough classification standards they are deemed to be classified, whereas prior to 9/11 they were not.

Nearly twenty years after the nuclear reclassification effort began, the U.S. government's reclassification program is still going on. Pursuant to the authority granted them by the Kyle-Lott Amendment of September 1998, every day of the week security personnel from the USAF and the Department of Energy are still quietly going through the stacks of the National Archives, box-by-box, looking for any documents relating directly or indirectly to nuclear weapons in order to withdraw them from public circulation, despite the fact that most of these materials have been in the public realm for decades.

I recently stumbled on these reclassification activities purely by accident. I made a request for some declassified USAF records held by the National Archives in early April 2017, only to discover that two of the boxes I had asked for were already charged out to “another U.S. government agency.” I later learned that this was the U.S. Air Force along with the Department of Energy. When I finally got these two boxes a few weeks later, some newly printed security classification withdrawal slips were found in both boxes. The USAF and DOE censors had collected their monthly quota of flesh and moved on to other pastures in their ceaseless effort to remove what they deemed to be sensitive material from the public files of the National Archives.

The problem is that this never-ending reclassification effort by the DOE and USAF is largely a pointless exercise and a huge waste of taxpayer money. Dozens of academics and researchers, such as myself, copied many of the now reclassified documents back in the 1980s and 1990s before the post-9/11 reclassification effort began. A number of commercial companies also had systematically microfilmed all of the high-level records relating to U.S. nuclear weapons history during the 1980s, and these records are still for sale on the open market. All of which means that thousands of the documents that the DOE and USAF have reclassified over the past twenty years are still available in the public realm, if one knows where to look.

The curious result is that over two hundred of the documents contained in this collection, which I either photocopied at the National Archives back in the 1980s and 1990s, or found in the Chuck Hansen collection at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., have been reclassified by the U.S. government since 9/11 and are no longer available to researchers. And there is no sign that this horrendous practice will cease any time soon.

Pretty much the same thing is happening with regard to chemical and biological weapons. In the aftermath of the 2001-2002 Iraqi WMD intelligence scandal, the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Army, has resumed its former posture of trying to keep all of the details of its former work on chemical and biological weapons a secret, refusing to declassify any further materials on development of these weapons during the Cold War or the related subject of experimentation on humans. So much for openness and transparency about our past work on these weapons.

So, in effect, this document collection is a rescue mission. It is meant to save from reclassification by the U.S. government those historical documents on WMD matters that were declassified prior to 9/11 but which are now under threat from overzealous government security officials. Concurrently, it is designed to provide ammunition to researchers and scholars seeking to get more documents declassified through the FOIA process in what is admittedly a very hostile declassification environment.

Key Findings Contained in this Collection

  • Before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, the U.S. military gave serious consideration to dropping thousands of tons of chemical weapons on civilian and military targets in Japan in order weaken the Japanese government's will to resist. But the documents reveal that the U.S. military was unprepared to execute this plan because too few chemical munitions were then forward deployed in the Pacific, with military commanders reporting that they would not have enough weaponry available to execute the plan until at least November 1945. By that time (fortunately) the war was over.[1]
  • The documents in this collection clearly indicate that Strategic Air Command (SAC), America's nuclear strike force, would have experienced great difficulty executing a large-scale nuclear strike on the Soviet Union if war had broken out between the U.S. and the USSR during the first decade of the Cold War (1945-1955).
    • The first critical problem was that there were not nearly enough trained nuclear weapons assembly teams available to arm and load onto SAC's bombers all the nuclear weapons that were then in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This serious deficiency was not fixed until well after the Korean War began in June 1950.[2]
    • The second critical problem was that all SAC bombers had to fly from their home bases around the U.S. to airfields next to a tiny number of national nuclear weapons storage sites in order to pick up their atomic bombs before flying off to attack their assigned targets inside the Soviet Union. At the time that the Korean War began in June 1950, there were only three national nuclear weapons storage sites (Manzano Base at Albuquerque, New Mexico; Killeen Base at Fort Hood, Texas, and Clarksville Base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky) that stored all of the 299 atomic bombs in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.[3] A fourth national nuclear weapons storage site – Bossier Base, located adjacent to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana – was activated in March 1952.[4]
    • This procedure was designed to give maximum protection to America's small nuclear weapons stockpile, but the documents show that in wartime it would have created massive delays in launching a nuclear strike on the USSR, as well as huge security problems, and a massive traffic jam on the ground and in the air as hundreds of SAC bombers would have had to jostle for space to land their planes at these three bases, load their nuclear weaponry, then take off in order to clear space on the ground for the next wave of SAC bombers. Exercises showed that it would have taken at least two full days (if all went according to plan) to arm SAC's entire force of near three hundred nuclear-capable B-29, B-50 and B-36 bombers before an atomic strike on the Soviet Union could be properly executed.[5]
    • Reliable intelligence information on SAC's strategic targets inside the USSR as well as details of the Soviet air defense system were so sparse that it is questionable if the bombers could reach their targets deep inside the Soviet Union, much less find them and destroy them. The strategic targets that SAC was assigned to destroy in the early 1950s consisted of 123 industrial and urban targets inside the Soviet Union (reduced to 72 major cities by 1952), most of which were located west of the Urals in the European portion of the USSR, 84 Soviet strategic bomber bases and dispersal fields, and four Soviet nuclear weapons facilities.[6] The lack of target materials, especially the dearth of high-resolution photography needed to prepare SAC's bombing target folders, was to dog the U.S. nuclear war planning process right up until the first operational CORONA reconnaissance satellite was successfully launched into space on August 18, 1960.[7]
  • During the early 1950s, the U.S. military believed that there were not enough nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal to stop a Soviet military advance into Western Europe if war was to break out. It must be remembered that there were no high-yield thermonuclear weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal at the time, and the thinking was that the yields of the fission bombs then in the American stockpile were not sufficiently large enough to cause the kind of mass damage needed to stop a Soviet military offensive. So for most of the 1950s, one of the principal mission assigned to SAC's bombers was to hammer the Soviet military forces through the mass employment of hundreds of fission bombs, with the goal of killing as many Soviet soldiers and destroying as many Russian tanks as possible in order to try to slow the Soviet advance until the U.S. and its NATO allies could bring in reinforcements and mobilize their reserves. This highly classified mission was known within the U.S. military as the “retardation mission.”[8]
  • In 1952 officials at USAF headquarters in Washington proposed mass drops of chemical and biological weapons on Soviet forces if war ever occurred.[9] In early 1952, the USAF secretly began drawing up plans to deploy 2,000 empty M33 biological warfare bombs to RAF Lakenheath in England and Wheelus Air Force Base in Libya. If war broke out, these bombs were to be filled with the Brucella suis (undulant fever) incapacitating agent, which would have to be flown in from a storage facility in the U.S. The plan, which was to be implemented in 1953, also called for training a USAF medium bomb group based in the UK that was equipped with B-29 and/or B-50 bombers to drop these weapons on targets inside Russia and/or Eastern Europe if war ever broke out. The name of this Top Secret operation was Operation STEELYARD.[10] It would appear, however, that negotiations with the British government on allowing the USAF to bring the biological weapons into the UK failed by August 1952, forcing the USAF to go back to the drawing board and rethink its plan.[11]
  • The USAF and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) deployed two nuclear weapons detachments (or “cells”) and non-nuclear components for a small number of Mark 7 atomic bombs to Japan and Guam in November-December 1952. These bombs were tactical nuclear weapons meant for delivery by a wing of USAF F-84G nuclear-capable fighters then deployed at Komaki Air Base outside the Japanese city of Nagoya. The nuclear cores for these bombs were stored on Guam so that the U.S. could claim that it had not deployed complete nuclear weapons to Japan. The bombs and weapons personnel were secretly withdrawn from Japan in early 1953, presumably because the State Department objected to their presence.[12]
  • In April 1953, the JCS approved a U.S. Army proposal to deploy chemical weapons into Japan covertly in an effort not to create a diplomatic imbroglio and a public relations disaster for the U.S. government. The U.S. Army was hesitant to go forward with the plan because the Army staff said that there was no way they could keep the presence of these lethal weapons in Japan a secret forever. Interestingly, there is no evidence that the State Department ever objected in any way or form to the JCS decision to secretly deploy chemical weapons to Japan.[13] The Secretary of Defense did not approve the top secret proposal until more than a year later on May 19, 1954, with CINCFE in Tokyo directing that these weapons be stored on the island of Okinawa, which was controlled by the U.S. at the time.[14]
  • In April 1953, the British government asked the U.S. to sell it 2,500 tons of sarin nerve gas for over 20 million dollar, which was a substantial sum of money at the time. The U.S. had not yet begun to produce sarin nerve gas for its own stockpile, forcing Washington to tell the UK government that it would have to wait until America's nerve gas requirements were filled before they would be willing to contemplate selling or giving a portion of their stockpile to Great Britain. The British came back again in July 1953 asking for the supply of sarin nerve gas, but this time they wanted it for free under the U.S. foreign aid grant assistance program. As late as the spring of 1954, the British government was still adamantly pressing the Pentagon to provide them with the previously requested 2,500 tons of sarin munitions.[15]
  • One of the documents contained in this collection is a 10-page February 1954 list of targets inside China that the Strategic Air Command intended to strike with nuclear weapons in case of war with China. The target list, which was compiled at the height of the 1954 Taiwan Strait Crisis, included virtually every major Chinese urban center and port, including Beijing and Shanghai, as well as virtually all military airfields in northern and eastern China. China was in the process of building up its military forces opposite Taiwan and threatening to invade the island.[16]
  • The U.S. kept all information concerning its plans to use biological weapons against Soviet forces in time of war a secret from its NATO allies. According to a declassified U.S. Army Chemical Corps document, in the spring and summer of 1954, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps prepared plans to use massive numbers of biological weapons (BW) against Soviet forces if the Soviets ever invaded West Germany. According to a declassified U.S. Army history, “This information was not communicated to other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nations, because severe political complications might result from premature disclosure of American plans.”[17]
  • This collection contains numerous documents detailing the U.S. military preparations for using nuclear weapons against mainland China during the 1954, 1955 and 1958 Taiwan Strait crises, which centered on efforts by the Chinese to capture two offshore islands called Quemoy and Matsu, that were controlled by Taiwan. The documents show that at the height of all three of these crises, Strategic Air Command (SAC) alerted its bomber forces for a potential nuclear attack against all of the Chinese military airfields and major ports opposite Taiwan.[18]
  • A June 6, 1955 letter by SAC commander General Curtis E. LeMay revealed that there were not enough thermonuclear weapons or nuclear capsules for these bombs in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to arm one-third of SAC's 200 B-47 and B-52 strategic bombers. According to LeMay, the 70+ H-bombs that should have been allocated for use by SAC had instead been given to American theater commanders in Europe and the Far East, leaving SAC critically short of the weapons it needed to perform its primary nuclear strike mission.[19]
  • In November 1955, the U.S. ambassador in Paris made the first request of the French government seeking permission to deploy and store American nuclear weapons in metropolitan France. This marked the beginning of more than five years of frustration and angst for the U.S. government as the French repeatedly refused increasingly urgent American requests to store nuclear weapons on their soil. Finally, the U.S. government simply gave up speaking to the French government about the subject once it became clear that Charles de Gaulle's government was never going to accede to their requests, no matter what Washington said or did.[20]
  • A declassified June 1956 U.S. Army memo revealed that there were two principal factions within the U.S. military, each advocating their own preferred weapon of mass destruction. The U.S. Army, especially the toxic weapons gurus in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, advocated more spending on chemical and biological weapons. The U.S. Air Force, especially the leaders of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), dismissed the value of chemical and biological weapons, advocating instead building more nuclear weapons, which they argued were a battle-tested and proven commodity. In the 1956 memo, the commander of SAC, General Curtis E. LeMay, told Assistant Secretary of the Army, Frank H. Higgins, that “he thought that chemical warfare never had any value, did not now, and furthermore it had no potential in modern warfare.” To put it mildly, General LeMay's position infuriated the U.S. Army, which was heavily invested in promoting further investment in chemical and biological weaponry.[21]
  • In 1956 the Defense Department learned that USAF transport aircraft carrying non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons were routinely transiting through French airfields on their way to West Germany, violating a 1952 agreement with the French government that barred the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in metropolitan France without the permission of the French government. The USAF hastily ordered that these transit flights cease immediately, but nobody informed the French of what had transpired in order to preserve the secrecy surrounding these incidents and thus avoid antagonizing the French government.[22]
  • A 1957 U.S. Army document revealed that SAC's top wartime nuclear target was, not surprisingly, the Soviet capital city of Moscow and all of the major military and industrial facilities located in and around the city, including three new SA-1 strategic surface-to-air missile launch sites and fourteen military and civilian airfields.[23]
  • In early 1958, after years of behind-the-scenes effort, the Pentagon managed to convince the Eisenhower administration to alter the U.S. government's longstanding national policy, which held that chemical and biological weapons would only be used in retaliation after the Soviets used their weapons first. The new national policy, which was contained in directive NSC 5810/1, dated May 6, 1958 and classified Top Secret, which kept it away from virtually everyone in the U.S. government, was “that the U.S. will be prepared and may use CW and BW in a general war under any circumstances where a military advantage can be foreseen subject to approval by the President. The United States may undertake the employment of chemical or biological weapons prior to their use by an aggressor.” In an instant, chemical and biological weapons had now become first strike weapons, unlike nuclear weapons, where the U.S. was publicly committed not to use them first.[24]
  • Beginning in 1958, the U.S. military began secretly building a large base infrastructure throughout Western Europe meant to store and maintain several thousand American nuclear weapons for exclusive use by America's NATO allies. According to one declassified February 1958 document, the U.S. military initially planned to build 63 nuclear weapons storage sites and six large command and support facilities in ten Western European countries in order to support the soon-to-arrive nuclear warheads meant for use by non-U.S. NATO countries. By mid-1961, the plan was to have constructed a total of 147 nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe servicing 175 NATO nuclear delivery units. Most of these nuclear storage facilities were to be located in West Germany. An estimated 2,750 American military personnel would be required to man and guard these extremely sensitive bases.[25] At the time the U.S. already had forty nuclear weapons storage sites in Western Europe holding nuclear weapons and warheads meant exclusively for the use of U.S. forces in Europe. The first four NATO nuclear weapons storage sites began construction in the fall of 1958 at four British air bases in West Germany which were to house CANBERRA bomber squadrons equipped with U.S. nuclear weapons, plus a site outside Paderborn, Germany, which was to house a British Army nuclear-capable CORPORAL missile regiment.[26] By the late 1970s/early 1980s there were over a hundred nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe operated by the U.S. Army and fourteen nuclear weapons storage sites controlled by the USAF holding atomic weapons exclusively for the use of non-U.S. NATO forces spread over ten countries, although most of the sites were in West Germany.
  • A September 1958 report to the JCS concluded that because of their very nature, biological weapons had little battlefield utility if nuclear war broke out between the U.S. and the USSR. Their only worth was if some form of a limited war broke out, which might make the use of biological warfare agents preferable to the use of nuclear weapons. In effect, the conclusion of this report doomed the U.S. biological warfare program since its main conclusion was that BW weapons, while being lethal in their killing power, just had no place on the battlefield.[27]
  • In early 1959 the U.S. Army secretly deployed what was described as a “token [chemical weapons] retaliatory capability” to West Germany without the formal consent of the German government, although German chancellor Konrad Adenauer was secretly briefed in August 1958 about the U.S. Army's plans. Adenauer apparently did not object to the U.S. military's plans to store chemical weapons on German soil. The 3,900 tons of mustard gas and sarin nerve gas weapons that were shipped to Germany were stored at the Seventh Army Chemical Depot, located on the grounds of the Rhine Ordnance Depot in Kircheimbolanden.[28]
  • As of January 1, 1959, the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile consisted of 11,400 tons of sarin nerve gas and almost 27,100 tons of mustard gas, for a total of 38,500 tons of toxic chemical agents in both filled munitions and kept in bulk storage tanks. As of the summer of 1959, the U.S. Army had stored in West Germany 75,000 artillery rounds filled with sarin nerve gas and mustard gas, 75,000 mortar rounds filled with mustard gas, and 100 tons of bulk-stored sarin and mustard gas. No chemical weapons had yet been deployed to the Far East. As for biological weapons, the U.S. BW stockpile consisted of 18,600 M33 500-lb. BW bombs and 4,700 M115 500-lb. BW bombs that could be filled with any number of anti-personnel or anti-crop biologic pathogens that were then in refrigerated storage at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. Approximately four hundred anti-personnel and an equal number of anti-crop BW bombs were stored in Great Britain and Libya, minus the lethal agents, which would have to be flown to these forward bases in time of war in order to fill these bombs[29]
  • By the early 1960s, huge portions of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile were found to be obsolete and could not be used. For example, as of January 1962 there were 59,000 115 lb. M70 mustard gas bombs in the chemical weapons stockpile that could no longer be used because the latest generation U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter bombers could not carry them. The Pentagon decided to keep its huge stockpile of mustard gas weapons, including the M70 bombs, despite the fact that the sarin and the VX nerve gas weapons that were then entering the stockpile were more lethal and far easier to use. It was a typical case of the Pentagon, realizing that if it did away with these weapons would never get them back. So it decided to keep the mustard gas bombs, even if they could no longer be used.[30]
  • The shootdown of a CIA U-2 spy plane over the USSR in 1960 forced the Pentagon to immediately begin dismantling most of its huge “city killer” high yield thermonuclear weapons, which were designed to be dropped by Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers flying at high altitude. The shootdown of the U-2 spy plane showed that Soviet air defenses could now easily shoot down American planes flying at high altitude, requiring that SAC reconfigure its tactics to focus on low-altitude delivery of its stockpile of nuclear weapons on Soviet targets. This meant that virtually all of the huge “city killer” thermonuclear bombs in SAC's inventory had to go, to be replaced by smaller, lighter bombs with lower yields that were designed to be dropped at lower altitudes with greater precision. However, a small number of Mark 28, Mark 41 and Mark 53 high-yield thermonuclear bombs were kept in the storage bunkers at SAC bases just in case they were needed, and were not retired from the nuclear stockpile until after the Cold War ended.[31]
  • At a May 5, 1962 NATO foreign and defense ministers' meeting held in Athens, Greece, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara revealed that the U.S. had over five thousand tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe, and that this number was continuing to increase at a rapid rate as a new generation of tactical nuclear weaponry was shipped to Europe. McNamara also revealed that 1,800 American strategic nuclear warheads were then committed to attacking seven hundred targets on SACEUR's nuclear target list inside the USSR and Eastern Europe.[32]
  • In 1962, West German defense minister Franz Josef Strauss proposed that the U.S. agree to a quid pro quo information sharing arrangement, whereby German firms would conduct research and development on new chemical and biological weapons technologies on behalf of the U.S. government. The U.S. would then make these weapons available to the German government since Germany was barred by the Brussels Treaty from manufacturing chemical or biological weapons. Separately, Strauss also inquired whether the U.S. would be willing to sell to Germany chemical weapons so that it could establish its own chemical weapons stockpile under NATO command.[33]
  • In 1963, the Pentagon finally accepted the long-held belief held outside the Defense Department that in wartime, the mass use of nuclear weapons to attack Soviet targets deep behind the lines would have little, if any, effect on slowing down, or retarding, a Soviet military advance into Western Europe.[34]
  • A declassified 1966 document revealed that there were now almost 7,800 tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe, not including nuclear weapons deployed with the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, British nuclear-capable combat aircraft, or POLARIS submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) that were assigned to hit targets in Eastern Europe.[35]
  • In 1967 the Pentagon launched a secret effort to dispose of over a hundred mustard gas bombs leftover from World War II, which were discovered buried on the grounds of Dacca airport in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. After a few weeks on the ground, the American military weapons disposal team left the country, leaving the uncovering and disposal of the remaining chemical munitions to untrained Pakistani laborers wearing no protective clothing other than rubber gloves and boots.[36]
  • The Pentagon reported in a 1969 briefing to the National Security Council (NSC) that a U.S. nuclear strike on the USSR would kill approximately 40 percent of the Soviet populace, destroy 190 of the largest cities in the Soviet Union, and wipe out an estimated 60 percent of the USSR's industrial capacity. And this was just in the first retaliatory strike, with the Pentagon reporting that it could kill more people if it chose to destroy all five hundred of the Soviet Union's largest cities and towns.[37]
  • A series of documents in this collection describe the immense damage done at the AEC's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, which manufactured plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons, as a result of a terrible fire in May 1969 which destroyed the production lines in two buildings but fortunately produced no casualties. The documents not only describe the damage done to the plant's facilities and the contamination caused by the fire, but also reveal that the loss of the nuclear trigger production lines in the two affected buildings set back the production of nuclear weapons in the U.S. by an entire year, including the suspension of production on nuclear warheads for the MINUTEMAN ICBM, the POSEIDON SLBM, and the new B61 tactical nuclear bomb. None of this information was ever revealed to the American public.[38]
  • On July 8, 1969, during a routine cleaning of nerve gas-filled bombs stored at the Chibana Ammunition Depot on Okinawa, a GB (sarin) leak occurred in a 500-pound bomb which injured 24 U.S. personnel. The U.S. Army initially tried to cover up the incident, but this effort came to naught when the Wall Street Journal published the details of the incident. The ensuing press reports prompted a storm of public protests in Japan, leading the Japanese government to demand that the weapons be removed immediately from Okinawa. Within a week it was announced that the chemical weapons would be removed. The chemical weapons stockpile at Chibana at the time consisted of 13,000 tons: 2,865 tons of mustard gas (HD), 8,322 tons of sarin nerve gas (GB), and 2,057 tons of VX nerve gas weaponry. All these weapons were removed from Okinawa by the end of September 1971.[39]
  • The July 1969 Okinawa nerve gas incident prompted all sorts of uncomfortable questions from America's allies in Europe and Asia about whether the U.S. was surreptitiously storing chemical weapons on their soil, as they had on Okinawa. When the West German government asked about the small U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile stored at a U.S. Army ordnance depot at Clausen near the French border, the State Department had the temerity to suggest that the German government refuse to disclose any information to the German public about the presence of American chemical munitions in their country. Fortunately, the German government rejected the State Department's advice and went public, revealing for the first time the fact that American chemical weapons had been secretly stored on German soil for over a decade.[40]
  • A November 1970 CIA briefing disclosed that at that time the U.S. and Britain had 9,400 nuclear warheads “committed for use in Europe,” compared with an estimated 5,900 to 8,600 Soviet tactical nuclear weapons that were allocated for use against NATO forces in Western Europe in wartime.[41]
  • A January 1971 NSC report revealed that there were 6,500 targets, both military and civilian, inside the USSR and Eastern Europe that the U.S. intended to strike with nuclear weapons in wartime. But the report stated that a U.S. nuclear strike “cannot destroy a significant part of the Soviet nuclear delivery capability,” and could only destroy about half of the designated Soviet military targets.[42]
  • In July 1972, the Pentagon activated a top secret 33-person nuclear weapons security unit at Yokota Air Force Base, Japan, hiding the unit's presence in Japan under the covername Management Control Detachment (MCD). The reason for the secrecy was that the U.S. government was terrified that the Japanese government would find out about the presence of the unit in their country, despite the fact that its mission was just to operate and maintain the permissive action link (PAL) security devices installed on American nuclear weapons deployed elsewhere in the Far East other than Japan.[43]
  • A declassified State Department report revealed that as of July 1972, the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile consisted of 22,000 tons of lethal chemical agents, including 14,000 tons of nerve gas (GB and VX) and 8,000 tons of mustard gas. Half of the stockpile was in the form of filled chemical munitions (mostly bombs and artillery shells), while the other half of the stockpile was stored in huge above-ground bulk containers.[44]
  • Declassified documentation about terrorist incidents involving American nuclear weapons are few and far between. One such incident actually occurred in December 1974 at a U.S. nuclear weapons storage site in West Germany after four men, two of whom were armed, were spotted trying to break through the perimeter fence of the station. The U.S. guard force at the base opened fire on the intruders. In the ensuing firefight, two U.S. guards were wounded. No further details about the incident are currently available.[45]
  • The costs and manpower associated with guarding the nuclear weapons deployed in Europe and Asia was exorbitant. An August 25, 1975 document revealed that over six thousand U.S. Army and USAF personnel were engaged in guarding and maintaining the thousands of nuclear weapons supporting NATO countries at an annual cost of 83.8 million dollar. U.S. Army nuclear weapons support was provided by ten U.S. Army field artillery groups with about five thousand personnel assigned. USAF nuclear weapons support was provided by fourteen munitions support squadrons with 1,100 assigned personnel.[46] In South Korea, one and one-half infantry battalions from the U.S. 7th Infantry Division were used to guard two U.S. Army nuclear weapons storage sites in Korea, four nuclear-capable artillery units belonging to the 4th Missile Command as well as six isolated nuclear-armed Nike-Hercules SAM sites spread throughout South Korea. The two MP companies guarding the two U.S. Army nuclear storage sites (SAD 200 and SAD 300) at Chon-Ni and Anyang-Ni were deemed to be not adequate to provide the required security.[47]
  • Despite intensive U.S. government lobbying efforts, a 1978 NSC memo revealed that America's NATO allies, particularly Great Britain and West Germany, were refusing to allow the U.S. military to deploy more chemical weapons on their territory.[48]
  • A recently published U.S. Army historical study revealed that as of the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were 107 U.S. Army-operated nuclear weapons storage sites located in five Western European countries (Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Netherlands), as well as a single chemical weapons storage site in West Germany. These sites held nuclear weapons meant for use by U.S., West German, Italian, Belgian, Greek, Turkish, Dutch and British nuclear-capable units. The U.S. Army study also includes a series of maps showing the locations of all the nuclear weapons storage sites in these five NATO countries.[49]
  • This collection includes the now infamous October 21, 1985 White House directive (NSDD 193) which imposed severe sanctions on New Zealand, including downgrading New Zealand's status from ‘ally' to ‘friendly country', which severely impacted on U.S. arms sales and commercial export licenses. These moves were prompted by an April 1985 decision by New Zealand prime minister David Lange to refuse to permit nuclear-armed U.S. Navy warships to dock in New Zealand ports.[50]
  • The U.S. intelligence community's knowledge, or lack thereof, concerning Soviet chemical and biological warfare capabilities during the Cold War was horrendously poor, so much so that it was only after the Cold War came to an end that the CIA and DIA realized just how badly they had botched their intelligence estimates as to the size of the Soviet chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. In the case of the Soviet chemical weapons stockpile, the U.S. intelligence community thought the Soviets had well over 100,000 tons of chemical munitions in its stockpile, when in fact the Soviets had just under 40,000 tons of chemical agents, most of it stored in bulk containers and not ready for use. As for the Soviet biological weapons stockpile, the CIA and DIA knew virtually nothing about the massive and super-secret Soviet BW research, development and production complex, and it came as a shock when a Soviet defector revealed that the Soviets had secretly developed and weaponized a massive array of BW agents.[51]
  • This collection includes a fascinating article about a little known U.S. Army unit known simply as the Technical Escort Unit (TEU), whose specially trained personnel were responsible for transporting and guarding chemical weapons shipments inside the U.S. and overseas. The TEU also guarded these weapons on ships before they were dumped into the sea, which was the U.S. Army standard method of disposing on unwanted chemical weaponry during the Cold War. The TEU was also responsible for securing, guarding and transporting captured foreign chemical and biological weapon, as was the case after Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when the TEU took custody of Iraq's stockpile of WMD that had been captured by U.S. forces.[52]
  • Some of the documents in this collection demonstrate the extreme measures taken to disguise the activities of the field units belonging to the USAF's secretive nuclear test detection unit, the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC). AFTAC's imagination, however, in the field of covert activities was not very well developed. For example, AFTAC's two clandestine nuclear test detection units based outside Ankara, Turkey (one gathered seismic intelligence, while the other was an acoustic intelligence unit) were given notional cover stories that they were both engaged in ‘weather research' despite the fact that there was not one single weather-related instrument at the site.[53]
  • During the boom years of the American nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. built tens of thousands of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons without any clearly defined requirements for the bombs. Nor did the Pentagon have any clear idea how it would use the weapons on the battlefield if indeed war with the Soviet Union or China ever broke out. By the late 1950s, deciding which nuclear weapons to buy oftentimes resembled day-to-day activities at an automobile showroom. AEC officials repeatedly complained that the Pentagon was continually demanding that they build bigger and more destructive nuclear weapons, such as ultra-high yield thermonuclear weapons, not because there was a clearly defined military need for the weapons, but rather because that is exactly what the scientists at the weapons laboratories were developing and secretly advertising to their customers in the Pentagon. In other words, technology was determining what bombs to buy rather than real-world requirements.[54]
  • The assistance provided by British and Canadian weapons scientists to the U.S. chemical and biological weapons program during the early years of the Cold War was far greater than most scholars have previously recognized. For example, it was the British biological weapons lab at Porton Down which was largely responsible for developing a “weaponized” version of the lethal anthrax virus. But available evidence indicates that by the late 1950s the value and import of British and Canadian assistance to the U.S. chemical and biological warfare programs diminished as these small programs were quickly dwarfed by the much larger and better funded American effort.[55]
  • In internal reports and memos, the language used to justify building more of these weapons of mass destruction, especially during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations in the 1950s, was truly frightening. Not only did Pentagon planners talk about committing mass murder in the coldest and most antiseptic terms, but the declassified correspondence reveals a deeply held belief that these weapons could actually be used on the battlefield without resulting in the global obliteration that we now accept would inevitably resulted from their use by either side. Take for example this justification for building more biological weapons made in 1951: “BW is distinctive as a weapon in that it does not destroy structures or property. The use of such a weapon would greatly simplify postwar problems.”[56] A 1956 U.S. Army report sought to justify building more chemical weapons on the grounds that these weapons killed more people for less money than nuclear weapons. The report contains some horrific “cost-per-casualty” figures, suggesting that the men and women who prepared this report really had little exposure to the horrors of war.[57] Or this statement made by a U.S. Army officer in a 1956 top secret memo, “As you are no doubt aware, the objective in biological warfare is to produce casualties in man, with or without causing death, through the deliberate use of microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi) or their toxic products. These agents can be launched directly against military forces or directly against the industrial workers who are supporting these forces, or indirectly against both through antifood warfare. Even in antifood warfare the ultimate target is the enemy's entire population. By destroying a nation's capability to feed itself, let alone maintain an effective fighting force, controlled hunger can become an effective weapon of war.”[58]
  • Perception is everything in the WMD world. One of the principal problems that the adherents of chemical and biological warfare faced throughout the Cold War was the truly awful reputation that these weapons enjoyed among the American and European public. Beginning in 1950, the Pentagon's public relations staff spent an inordinate amount of time and money trying to soften and clean up the awful reputation that chemical and biological weapons enjoyed amongst the American public, especially among those who remember the horrors associated with the use of poison gas on the Western Front during World War I. As late as the mid-1960s the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Army's Chemical Corps, was still trying to convince people that the use of chemical and biological weapons was no worse than the mass casualties that would be caused by dropping a nuclear weapon. This entire propaganda effort was classified Top Secret and paid for with millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money.[59] In 1954, the U.S. Army commenced a small-scale propaganda campaign in Japan to try to convince the Japanese government and public that there was an urgent need for the U.S. to deploy chemical weapons to Japan.[60] In 1957 the U.S. government launched a similar campaign to smooth the way for the deployment of nuclear air defense missiles in both the continental United States and Canada. The Pentagon feared that public opposition in the U.S. and Canada could arise over the potential use of these weapons in wartime over American or Canadian cities.[61]
  • The Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Department of Energy) went to extraordinary lengths to hide any information about accidents and other safety issues involving America's stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. This collection contains dozens of documents detailing the numerous nuclear weapons accidents that occurred during the Cold War era. The total number of these accidents, known within the U.S. military as BROKEN ARROW incidents, far exceeds the paltry number that the Pentagon was willing to admit prior to the end of the Cold War. Weapons were jettisoned into the sea, caught fire and burned, were accidently dropped onto farms, rivers, and swamps across America, or were badly damaged in road accidents and train derailments. And in a few particularly serious incidents, the weapons came perilously close to detonating.[62]
  • In addition, the Pentagon hid from Congress, the White House and the public at large the fact that many of the nuclear weapons in its arsenal were unsafe because of a lack of security protection, or could not be used safely for a variety of technical reasons. For example:
    • A 1959 AEC report found that some American nuclear weapons, like the GENIE air-to-air missile, all variants of the Atomic Demolition Munition (ADM), and the Davy Crockett nuclear-capable recoilless rifle, were dangerous to have around. They had no safety features to prevent their unauthorized use, nor was there any clearly enunciated doctrine as to how to use these weapons in wartime. These weapons were also inherently dangerous to use.[63]
    • It was not clear that fighter pilots firing the GENIE nuclear air-to-air missile had enough time to escape the blast of the nuclear explosion resulting from the missile's detonation. The GENIE missile also had no security locks or other safety mechanisms to prevent their unauthorized use by the pilots, so virtually all the missiles sat on the ground under guard rather than take the chance that some crazed pilot would launch the missile at an airliner or a flock of birds.[64]
    • In 1960 the weapons designers at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore Labs discovered a series of serious design and reliability problems with the Mark 7 and Mark 12 nuclear bombs that were then widely deployed with U.S. and NATO fighter-bomber units in Western Europe that made them inherently unsafe and insecure. The same problem was found to be true with the Mark 49 nuclear warhead carried by the JUPITER IRBM deployed in Italy and Turkey at the time.[65] In 1961 the AEC and the Pentagon hastily began retrofitting all Mark 7 bombs on ground-alert in Europe and Asia with velocity sensing safety devices “to provide further insurance against accidental detonations.”[66]
    • A 1961 study found that a series of recent nuclear weapons accidents were far more serious than the Pentagon had reported. There had also been a number of accidental launches of nuclear-capable missiles caused by mechanical malfunctions, as well a larger number of incidents caused by human error. In one case, a weapons maintenance man at the U.S. Army nuclear weapons storage depot in Seneca, New York accidently screwed together two bomb components which would have detonated the weapon if it had been armed.[67]
    • A 1962 report found that the newly deployed DAVY CROCKETT battlefield bazooka that was armed with a small nuclear warhead could not be protected from unauthorized use because the Permissive Action Link (PAL) safety devices then available were too large for the tiny “mini-nuke” weapon. A series of 1963 Pentagon reports also found that because of its extremely short range, the DAVY CROCKETT could only be used at the very edge of the frontlines, where it was extremely vulnerable to capture or destruction by Soviet forces. In other words, its survival potential if war ever broke out was next to nil. And yet, despite the awful risks associated with the weapons, hundreds of DAVY CROCKETT nuclear weapons were deployed to West Germany in the fall of 1961, and were not withdrawn until the summer of 1967 when the Pentagon could no longer hide the security risks associated with the weapon.[68]
  • Despite years of pondering the matter, the Pentagon could never devise a way to effectively use biological weapons on the battlefield. The reason for this failure was simple: the weapons were, by their very nature, so uncontrollable that the generals in Washington could not figure out a way to prevent these weapons from killing tens of thousands of American and NATO and soldiers at the same time as killing thousands of Soviet soldiers.[69]

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program

When the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) took over the nuclear weapons production complex from the U.S. Army's Manhattan Engineering District (MED), better known as the Manhattan Project, on January 1, 1947, the AEC officials found that the atomic weapons complex was in a state of disarray. Immediately after Japan's surrender, the commander of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie R. Groves, had sent thousands of his employees home, including virtually all of the best and the brightest scientists, engineers and military technicians who had worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos during World War II. These men and women returned to their peacetime jobs in academia or industry, leaving Los Alamos and its outlying industrial infrastructure vastly undermanned and underfunded. Morale amongst the 5,200 person workforce at Los Alamos that remained on the government payroll was low for a variety of reasons, leading to the resignation of many of the lab's few top scientists and engineers in the years immediately after the end of the war.[70]

With the war over, the Manhattan Project came to a virtual standstill without any real purpose. Moreover, there was little work being done developing new atomic bombs, and the few bombs that were available were so large and complex that they required a team of specially trained engineers at Sandia Base outside Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico several days to assemble and make ready for use one of these bombs for use.[71] Because of the complexity of the firing mechanism and the slow‑drying adhesive that held the hand-crafted high explosive lenses in place, it took more than two days for a specially trained team of 39 scientists, engineers and technicians to fully assemble a single Mark III “Fat Man” bomb.[72]

Responsibility for storing and guarding the nation's tiny nuclear weapons stockpile became the responsibility of a little known branch of the U.S. military called the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), which replaced the Manhattan Engineering District as the Pentagon's unit responsible for all things related to nuclear weaponry.[73]

For four long years after the end of World War II (1945-1949), the U.S. nuclear weapons program limped along, waiting for something momentous to happen. Work on developing new atomic weapons moved forward at a snail's pace, and few new weapons were actually manufactured.[74]


Table 1: The Size of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile for the fiscal years 1945-1948

Number of non‑nuclear components

1945

1946

1947

1948

1. Gun‑type

0

0

0

2

2. Implosion

2

9

29

53

         

Number of nuclear components

1945

1946

1947

1948

3. Gun‑type

0

0

0

0

4. Implosion‑type

2

9

13

50

SOURCE: Department of Energy, Report, Restricted Data Declassification Decisions: 1946 to the Present, January 1, 2002, FOUO, OSTI.


At a meeting at the White House on April 3, 1947, for the purpose of briefing President Truman on the existing stockpile situation, the President was shocked to learn that the nuclear stockpile was so small (and that none of the bombs had been assembled nor were there competent teams available for assembly). The actual number of weapons available (thirteen bombs) was left blank on the report but provided orally to the President by AEC chairman David S. Lilienthal. The meeting ended on that grim note.[75]

When President Truman approved the first series of nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific, known as SANDSTONE, on June 27, 1947, the United States had only thirteen nuclear weapons in its stockpile. One year later, in spite of heavier emphasis on increased production of fissionable material, the number of weapons in the nuclear stockpile was only about fifty, far short of four hundred atomic bombs that Pentagon's military planners calculated would be needed if war with the Soviet Union was to break out. The more efficient weapon designs that were proof‑tested at SANDSTONE, coupled with the higher production rates of fissionable material, allowed the great expansion of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile that began in late 1949.[76]

But progress, such as it was at the time, was measured in baby steps. By the end of 1948, the U.S. nuclear stockpile consisted of 56 Mk 3 nuclear weapons, all in the hands of the AEC. To make matters worse, the USAF had only 32 SILVERPLATE-modified nuclear-capable B-29 bombers that were operational, all of which were assigned to the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell/Walker AFB, New Mexico. Because of the increasing communist threat, USAF decided to boost the number of SILVERPLATE B-29s to 227 aircraft by the end of 1948, then 492 aircraft by mid-1950. All aircraft were to be modified to carry both the existing Mk 3 bomb and the improved Mk 4 nuclear bomb, which entered the nuclear stockpile in early 1949. The program was assigned the codename GEM.[77] On June 25, 1950, the day North Korea invaded South Korea, the U.S. nuclear stockpile consisted of 299 nuclear weapons.[78]

>The Growth of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Production Complex

This collection contains dozens of declassified documents detailing the rapid growth of the secret U.S. nuclear weapons research, development and production complex during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations (1945-1960), as the White House poured billions of dollars into the complex after the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in August 1949, followed by the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950. After the beginning of the Korean War, the Truman administration quickly removed all restraints on the growth of the U.S. nuclear weapons program.[79]

On October 9, 1950, President Truman approved “a sharp increase in the production of fissionable materials and weapons.” Pursuant to this directive, a series of new fission weapons were ordered placed into production immediately, and the bombs already in the nuclear stockpile were ordered retrofitted with new equipment to improve their reliability and performance. Truman also ordered Los Alamos to begin work on the development of the world's first thermonuclear weapon, which was referred to within the U.S. government simply as the “Super.”[80]

The ensuing growth of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex during the 1950s was staggering in its size and scope, and probably could not be duplicated today because of the extraordinary costs involved and the need to keep the entire undertaking secret, which in today's congressional oversight regime and the free-for-all media environment in the U.S. would be impossible to maintain.

Between 1950 and 1960, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) built a number of new plutonium reactors at Hanford, Washington and Savannah River, South Carolina, and expanded the production of weapons-grade enriched uranium at the Y-12 plant outside Oak Ridge, Tennessee for the new generation of nuclear weapons that were just beginning to come off the assembly lines. Government-owned, contractor-operated factories were hastily built in Colorado, Ohio, Missouri and Florida to produce the vast array of specialized electrical and mechanical components needed for the bombs, such as casings, fuses, detonators, initiators and plutonium pits. The AEC's only nuclear weapons final assembly plant at Burlington, Iowa was expanded, and work quickly began on building a second even larger atomic weapons final assembly facility outside Amarillo, Texas called the Pantex Plant.[81]

All the fissile materials, electrical and mechanical weapons components, circuitry and bomb casings from all these AEC-owned plants were shipped by rail to two heavily-guarded final assembly facilities: the Burlington Ordnance Plant near the tiny town of Middletown, Iowa and the Pantex Plant, located outside the city of Amarillo, Texas.

  • The Iowa Ordnance Plant, also known as the Burlington Ordnance Plant, which was located in rural southeastern Iowa, was America's first completely autonomous nuclear weapons final assembly plant. It replaced the Tech Area II at Los Alamos Laboratory as America's sole nuclear weapons final assembly plant.[82] Between 1949 and 1951, the Burlington plant was the sole American nuclear weapons final assembly plant. During this timeframe it operated in complete secrecy, the plant's workers being barred from discussing what they were doing behind the electrified barbed wire fences that surrounded their workplace. It was not until 1951 that the AEC finally acknowledged that a portion of the Burlington plant was engaged in unspecified “classified work” for the AEC.[83] In 1973, the decision was made to close the AEC facility in Burlington and to transfer its nuclear weapons manufacturing operations to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The nuclear weapons assembly portion of the plant was not formally closed down until July 1, 1975.[84]
  • The Pantex Plant, located 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas, has been America's sole nuclear weapons final assembly facility since the closing of the AEC's nuclear weapons production facilities at the Burlington Ordnance Plant in 1975.[85] Since weapons production began at Pantex in June 1952, the plant's multiple production lines have produced thousands of nuclear weapons and warheads. No new nuclear weapons have been built at Pantex since 1991, with most of the plant's work over the past twenty years being focused on weapons modification and dismantlement. The sensitivity that the U.S. government still attaches to this facility is demonstrated by the fact that since 9/11, the Department of Energy (DOE) has gone to extraordinary lengths to quietly withdraw from public circulation a number of unclassified documents regarding this facility, most of which dealt with the plant's history and/or cultural legacy.[86]
  • Immediately after the end of World War II, the few atomic bombs in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile were stored in a tunnel complex at Los Alamos Laboratory, then in a small but heavily guarded bunker complex at Sandia Laboratories adjacent to Kirtland Air Force in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[87] But as the size of the stockpile began to grow by leaps and bounds, new storage facilities had to be built in order to securely house all the new weapons. To store and guard all these nuclear bombs, between 1947 and 1957 the AEC and the Pentagon secretly built thirteen large nuclear weapons storage sites inside the Continental United States, six of which were designated national nuclear weapons storage sites, and seven were referred to as Operational Storage Sites (OSS). The hundreds of buried nuclear weapons storage bunkers (or ‘igloos') at these thirteen bases were guarded by thousands of military troops, and their mission kept secret from everyone without an absolute ‘need to know.' Even today, the U.S. government is still trying to keep the nuclear mission of these thirteen bases a secret.[88]


Table 2: AEC-DOD National Nuclear Weapons Storage Sites

Formal Name

Cover Name

Location

Manzano Base

Site Able

Kirtland AFB, New Mexico

Killeen Base

Site Baker

Fort Hood, Texas

Clarksville Base

Site Charlie

Fort Campbell, Kentucky

Bossier Base

Site Dog

Barksdale AFB, Louisiana

Caribou Air Force Station,

Site Easy

Loring Air Force Base, Limestone, Maine

Rushmore Air Force Station

Site Fox:

Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota

Deep Creek Air Force Station

Site George

Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington

Fairfield Air Force Station

Site How

Travis Air Force Base, California

Stony Brook Air Force Station

Site Item

Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts

Skiffes Creek Annex

Site Jig

Yorktown NWS, Williamsburg, Virginia

Medina Base

Site King

Lackland AFB, Texas

Lake Meade Base

Site Love

Nellis AFB, Nevada

North Ordnance Site

Site Yoke

Seneca Army Depot, Romulus, New York


SOURCES: USAF, Report, The History of Air Force Participation in the Atomic Energy Program, 1943-1953, 1958, Top Secret/Restricted Data; AEC, Report, Report of the Manager Santa Fe Operations, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission: July 1, 1950 to January 1, 1954, 1958, Secret/Restricted Data; Leland Johnson, Sandia National Laboratories: A History of Exceptional Service in the National Interest (Albuquerque, NM: Sandia National Laboratories, 1997).

By the mid-1950s, the AEC's nuclear weapons production complex was building fission and thermonuclear bombs almost as fast as the Ford Motor Company was building new cars at its Detroit auto plants. In September 1955, the AEC began deploying the first of the newly made Mark 17/24 Mod 1 thermonuclear weapons from its national nuclear weapons storage sites to nuclear storage facilities located on various SAC air bases throughout the U.S. and overseas. The following month, the AEC began dispersals of Mk 17/24 Mod 1 thermonuclear weapons to U.S. Navy storage facilities. The AEC, however, retained custody of the weapons.[89] And yet, despite the massive size of this undertaking, not a word leaked out to the press about what was going on behind the barbed wire fences that surrounded these factories.[90]

By 1960, the last full year of the Eisenhower administration, the AEC's Burlington and Pantex plants built a total of 7,178 nuclear warheads, or 19.6 fission bombs or thermonuclear weapons a day, every day of the year. This was the largest number of nuclear warheads that the U.S. ever built in a single year.[91]

The size and production capacity of the AEC's nuclear weapons production complex hit its peak during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the early to mid-1960s. At its height in the mid-1960s during the Lyndon Johnson administration, the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex was a vast, albeit very secretive, industrial enterprise, employing almost 200,000 government employees and contractor personnel in dozens of research laboratories, testing grounds, and production complexes spread across the U.S.[92]

The 1960s were the “Golden Age” of America's nuclear arsenal. Between 1961, the first year of the Kennedy administration, and 1967, the year in which the Lyndon Johnson administration decided to reduce the size of the nuclear weapons stockpile, the Burlington and Pantex plants built a staggering 24,000 nuclear bombs and warheads, or 9.3 nuclear weapons built every day of the year, most of which were warheads for the first American intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons meant to be deployed to Western Europe and, to a lesser degree, the Far East.[93]

The Size of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile

Thanks to President Bill Clinton's open-minded Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, in April 1994 the Department of Energy for the first time released a year-by-year breakdown of the total number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but only for the period 1945 to 1961. Despite its limitations, this was the first time that the U.S. government had ever officially disclosed how many nuclear weapons it had. A copy of this historic DOE document is contained in this collection.[94]

Since Secretary O'Leary's 1994 release, the U.S. government has continued to release more and more information about the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, bringing these numbers up to the present day. The Defense Department and the DOE have also declassified and released information about the total number of nuclear weapons deployed by the U.S. Navy at sea from the Cold War period to the present day. A complete year-by-year inventory of the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile is contained at the end of this essay in Annex I.[95]

The declassified DOE data shows that the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile reached its all-time peak in 1967, when there were 31,255 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads deployed with U.S. forces at home and overseas. In 1968, towards the end of the Lyndon Johnson administration, the U.S. began a substantial reduction in the number and types of tactical nuclear weapons, the majority of which were deployed overseas in Western Europe, but at the same time began increasing the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

At the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, declassified documents show that the U.S. nuclear stockpile stood at 22,217 warheads and bombs. At the time the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) was signed two years later in 1991, which was the same year that the Soviet Union collapsed, there were 19,000 warheads in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, half of which were classified as tactical nuclear weapons. The documents also reveal that the U.S. has built no new nuclear weapons since 1991.[96]

Over the next two decades, the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile fell sharply. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush ordered a dramatic reduction in the number of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stored overseas, including ordering the immediate removal all nuclear weapons from South Korea, the removal of all tactical nuclear weapons from all U.S. Navy warships, and the immediate dismantlement of all U.S. Army nuclear artillery shells and ballistic missiles. All that was left of the U.S. tactical nuclear arsenal after these actions were completed were a couple of hundred B-61 nuclear bombs deployed in a small number of NATO countries.[97]

Over the next twenty years, tens of thousands of American nuclear weapons and warheads were quietly returned to the Pantex Plant outside Amarillo, Texas to be dismantled and their fissionable components recycled.[98]

As of 2009, the year that President Barack Obama took office, there were only 5,113 nuclear warheads in the U.S. stockpile, the vast majority of which were strategic nuclear weapons. As of 2016 (the date of the latest information released by the Pentagon), the U.S. nuclear stockpile consisted of 4,018 warheads, most of which were mounted on ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.[99]

While no new nuclear weapons have been built since 1991, the DOE has modernized hundreds of existing warheads in order to improve their safety and reliability, as well as extend their lifetime by several decades. In recent years the DOE has revealed that it wants to build a new version of the B-61 tactical nuclear bomb, claiming that it is only a modification of an existing weapon rather than a new nuclear weapon. The future of this program remains cloudy as the Trump administration has not yet indicated whether it intends to proceed with this multi-billion dollar project.[100]

Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe and Asia

While much has been written over the years about the development of American strategic nuclear weapons (ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and manned strategic bombers), comparatively little has been written about the U.S. military's much larger stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons, which were designed to be used on the battlefield against Soviet and Chinese conventional forces. Several hundred documents contained in this collection deal with the origins of tactical nuclear weapons, their design, production, and deployment in Europe and Asia.[101]

Despite the transparency shown by the U.S. government over the number of weapons in the American nuclear arsenal, the same cannot be said about the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe and Asia during the Cold War. These numbers remain secret, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.

But do not despair. A significant number of the declassified documents contained in this collection provide hard-to-come-by data on the numbers of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe and Asia, as well as detailed information about which countries hosted these weapons during the Cold War era.

The documents reveal that the first American tactical nuclear weapons arrived in Europe in April 1952, when over one hundred of the new lightweight Mark 7 and Mark 8 tactical nuclear bombs were flown from the U.S. to RAF Sculthorpe airfield in England. By the fall of 1952, the USAF had built brand-new nuclear weapons storage facilities at RAF Alconbury, RAF Sculthorpe, RAF Wethersfield and RAF Woodbridge to accommodate the 130 tactical atomic bombs that were now deployed in the UK.[102]

Next came West Germany, where the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force intended to deploy several thousand tactical nuclear weapons to counter the huge Soviet conventional military forces based in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. In May 1954, the U.S. ambassador in Bonn secretly told German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that the U.S. military intended to deploy nuclear weapons to Germany beginning in 1955, but provided the German leader with few other details (such as the number of weapons involved or where they would be stored). After months of negotiations, the first of several hundred Mark 7 and Mark 12 tactical nuclear bombs began arriving by air from the U.S. at Bitburg Air Base in West Germany in March 1955. These bombs were followed in April 1955 by several hundred nuclear warheads for MATADOR surface-to-surface missiles and atomic artillery shells for the five battalions of massive 280mm atomic artillery guns then deployed in West Germany, then in May 1955 by several hundred more nuclear warheads for the U.S. Army's HONEST JOHN rockets. By the end of 1955, Germany had become the single largest overseas storage site for American nuclear weapons in the world.[103] As of 1961, 60 percent of all the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe were deployed in West Germany.[104]

By the end of the Eisenhower administration, over 2,500 nuclear weapons and warheads were deployed in Western Europe for the use of American forces in wartime. As of September 1957, the following nuclear delivery units and the associated nuclear warheads were assigned to U.S. military forces based in Western Europe: six CORPORAL missile battalions, six 280mm atomic cannon battalions, three HONEST JOHN rocket battalions, six NIKE HERCULES SAM battalions, three MATADOR missile squadrons, and forty nuclear-capable fighter bomber squadrons. By 1960, the planned strength of these forces was: five CORPORAL missile battalions, six 280mm artillery battalions, three HONEST JOHN battalions, three REDSTONE missile battalions, six LACROSSE rocket battalions, ten NIKE HERCULES SAM battalions, three MATADOR squadrons, and 37 nuclear-capable fighter bomber squadrons.[105]

In the Far East, the first nuclear bombs were deployed to Kadena Air Base on the U.S.-controlled island of Okinawa in July 1954, a fact which the Japanese government was not informed of. By the end of the 1950s, several hundred fission and thermonuclear weapons were being stored at Kadena Air Base for use by both Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers and by USAF tactical fighter bombers.[106] In February 1956 and September 19546 respectively, a small number of nuclear bombs were deployed to two former Japanese islands: Iwo Jima and Chichi-Jima. Again, the Japanese government was not informed of this move.[107] Nuclear bombs and nuclear ASW depth bombs were deployed to the Philippines in December 1957, MATADOR nuclear-capable missiles were sent to Taiwan in January 1958.[108] But the biggest move came in January 1958, when the U.S. military secretly began deploying hundreds of nuclear weapons to South Korea. According to declassified documents, the U.S. Army sent nuclear warheads for HONEST JOHN ballistic missiles, the 280mm atomic cannon and 8-inch howitzer, and atomic demolition munitions (ADM) to South Korea in 1958, a move which the State Department opposed. In March 1958, the USAF deployed nuclear bombs to two South Korean airfields.[109]

Most American tactical nuclear weapons were deployed to Europe between 1958 and 1964, with the surge of weapons being shipped to Europe taking place during the Kennedy administration from 1961 to 1963. For example, on May 5, 1962 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara revealed at a NATO ministerial meeting in Athens, Greece that the U.S. had deployed in Western Europe more than five thousand tactical nuclear weapons.[110]

In December 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara informed a NATO ministerial meeting that the number of strategic nuclear warheads in the U.S. alert force had increased by more than 100 percent over the past two years to almost 2,800 warheads. U.S. tactical nuclear weaponry was also being expanded and modernized. “New tactical bombs for aircraft delivery are now on hand in large numbers, replacing older types. LACROSSE and the 280mm projectiles are on their way out. The SERGEANT missiles have come into operation in Europe; and the United States alone will have approximately 200 on the continent next year. Deployment of the longer range PERSHING is scheduled to begin next March... Among the smaller weapons, the number of atomic demolition munition [ADM] warheads has gone up nine-fold in the last year, and 155mm howitzer nuclear projectiles will be introduced into the forces during 1964. The number of tactical nuclear weapons on this side of the Atlantic has increased by almost 60 percent since early 1961.”[111]

In November 1965, the New York Times revealed that more than five thousand tactical nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe, and that this number would be increased by about 20 percent over the next six months. This would represent a doubling of the number of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe over the past five years.[112] In 1967 the number of tactical nuclear warheads deployed in Europe reached over seven thousand weapons, with Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford publicly revealing in October 1968 for the first time ever that the U.S. had 7,200 tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe.[113]


Table 3: The U.S. Tactical Nuclear Weapons Stockpile: 1970

Type

Atlantic

Europe

Pacific

Afloat

Total

Tactical offensive

0

6000

1600

1300

8900

Tactical defensive

0

1200

200

0

1400

Fleet ASW and AAW

50

200

150

2200

2600

TOTAL

50

7400

1950

3500

12900

In addition to the above, about 2,500 tactical nuclear warheads and 1,100 ASW/AAW nuclear warheads were stored in the United States, bringing the total size of the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stockpile to 16,500.

SOURCE: National Security Council, Report, U.S. Strategic Objectives and Force Posture: Executive Summary, January 3, 1971, Top Secret, p. 35, NSC FOIA


Storing and guarding the nuclear weapons deployed in Europe was an extremely manpower intensive and costly endeavor. As of 1975, a report revealed that over six thousand U.S. Army and USAF personnel were engaged in providing nuclear weapons support to the NATO countries at an annual cost of 83.8 million dollar, not including operations and maintenance costs or host nation financing. U.S. Army nuclear weapons support was provided by ten U.S. Army field artillery groups with about five thousand personnel assigned, while USAF nuclear weapons support was provided by fourteen munitions support squadrons deployed throughout Western Europe with 1,100 assigned personnel. Pay and allowances for these personnel came to about 17 million dollar.[114]

The number of American tactical nuclear warheads in Europe remained stable at about seven thousand warheads for the next twenty years until the early 1980s, when America's NATO allies finally relented and allowed the Pentagon to remove a thousand old and obsolete nuclear warheads for the HONEST JOHN rocket from Europe.[115]

But the declassified documents in this collection reveal that there were many more American nuclear weapons available for use against targets in Europe if required, with a declassified CIA report disclosing that as of November 1970, the U.S. and Great Britain together had committed a total of 9,400 nuclear warheads for use in Europe, with most of the overage being accounted for by warheads mounted on POSEIDON ballistic missile submarines that were committed to strike targets in Europe if war were to break out.”[116]


Table 4: The U.S. Tactical Nuclear Weapons Stockpile: 1983

Type

CONUS

Europe (U.S.)

NATO

Pacific

Total

Aerial Bombs

1210

1415

320

135

3080

Pershing IA

-

195

100

-

295

8" AFAP

200

505

430

65

1200

155mm AFAP

160

595

140

30

925

Lance SSM

210

325

370

-

905

Honest John

100

-

200

-

300

Nike Hercules

55

300

390

-

745

ADM

215

370

-

20

605

TOTAL

2150

3705

1950

250

8055

           

Naval Tactical Nuclear Weapons

       

Type

CONUS

Afloat

Europe

Pacific

Total

Aerial Bombs

-

720

-

-

720

Depth Bombs

560

45

190

100

895

Terrier SAM

155

135

-

-

290

ASROC

225

350

-

-

575

SUBROC

110

175

-

-

285

TOTAL

1050

1425

190

100

2765

GRAND TOTAL

       

10820

SOURCE: Richard Halloran, “Report to Congress Provides Figures for Nuclear Arsenal,” New York Times, November 15, 1983, p. A15


Nuclear Weapons-Related Agreements With NATO Nations

Between 1957 and the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and most (but not all) of the NATO member nations signed several dozen highly secret agreements relating to nuclear weapons, including agreements for the U.S. to provide nuclear weapons support for the armed forces of NATO and all its member armed forces, agreements allowing the U.S. to provide classified nuclear weapons information to the NATO member nations, agreements permitting the U.S. to store nuclear weapons on the territory of NATO member nations, agreements requiring joint consultation on the use of nuclear weapons, as well as transport nuclear weapons through the airspace of NATO countries. Many of these secret agreements are still in force today, and the U.S. government and the NATO nations are extremely reluctant to permit the declassification of any details whatsoever about these agreements for a variety of political reasons.[117]

Despite the extreme secrecy surrounding these bilateral nuclear weapons agreements between the U.S. and its NATO allies, dozens of documents were discovered in the U.S. National Archives and the Presidential Libraries detailing the nature and extent of these agreements. Pertinent details of these agreement for each NATO country follows:

Belgium: On January 22, 1960, U.S. and Belgian officials signed an exchange of notes confirming the ratification of an Atomic Stockpile Agreement. A secret supplement to this agreement was signed in Brussels on June 30, 1960. This was followed by separate bilateral nuclear agreements with the U.S. Army on April 7, 1960, and the U.S. Air Force in Europe (USAFE) on October 4, 1960, which was referred to as the PINE CONE agreement.[118] On January 12, 1962, after two years of waiting, the secret 144b Atomic Cooperation Agreement was finally initialed by the Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Henri Spaak and the U.S. ambassador to Brussels Douglas MacArthur II without any publicity. The document was formally signed in Brussels on May 17, 1962.[119]

France: On May 7, 1959, the U.S. and French governments signed an unclassified 144b Atomic Cooperation Agreement, whose official title was the Agreement for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes. As with the Dutch 144b agreement (see below), there were two classified annexes to the French 144b agreement which were not publicly disclosed, a secret Technical Annex and a confidential Security Annex. On September 6, 1960, U.S. and French officials signed a Third Party NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement allowing the U.S. to provide nuclear weapons support to French forces stationed in West Germany.[120] On July 27, 1961, the U.S. and French governments signed the Agreement for Cooperation in the Operations of Atomic Weapons Systems for Mutual Defense Purposes in Paris. The treaty entered into force on October 9, 1961, and paved the way for the U.S. to provide French military units based in West Germany with nuclear weapons support.[121] The U.S. withdrew all nuclear weapons support for the French military in June 1966 after President Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO and ordered all U.S. forces out of France.[122]

Germany: On March 27, 1959, the U.S. and West German governments signed an Atomic Stockpile Agreement in Bonn. As part of what was called the WAGON TRAIN agreement, USAFE and the German Minister of Defense exchanged diplomatic notes calling “for the establishment of a NATO Special Ammunition storage program in Germany” for nuclear support for nuclear-capable West German Air Force (Luftwaffe) strike fighter units. The agreement stated that “Atomic weapon support will be provided to GAF strike squadrons in support of NATO defense plans. The timing of deployment of U.S. custodial detachments to custodial storage sites will be dependent upon the attainment of operational readiness of GAF delivery units, the availability of storage facilities and other support as mutually agreed upon.” On April 7, 1960, a bilateral stockpile agreement was signed by USAREUR and the German Minister of Defense permitting the U.S. to provide nuclear weapons support to the West German army (Bundeswehr), followed three days later on April 10, 1960 by the signing of a bilateral nuclear stockpile agreement between USAFE and the West German Luftwaffe.[123]

Great Britain: On May 3, 1954, Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson informed the JCS that “The UK has accepted the introduction of complete atomic weapons by the U.S. into the UK.” On July 26, 1954, the JCS stated that “The JCS recommends the immediate deployment of nuclear components to the UK half-line deleted. Also requests dispersal of additional non-nuclears to the UK.”[124] On December 14, 1956, USAF Chief-of-Staff General Nathan Twining proposed to the Chief of the British Air Staff, Sir Dermot Boyle, to provide U.S. nuclear weapons to the RAF “in the event of general war and to coordinate the nuclear strike plans of the USAF and the RAF.” This agreement was memorialized in January 1957 in an exchange of letters between British Minister of Defense Duncan Sandys and American Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson.[125] On May 24, 1957, the USAF and RAF signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) whereby the USAF agreed to provide RAF Bomber Command units equipped with VALIANT, VULCAN and VICTOR bombers with a number of Mk 5 nuclear weapons in the event of a general war with the USSR. In addition, both parties agreed to coordinate their respective atomic strike plans.[126] On February 22, 1958, a U.S.-UK Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed which governed how the THOR missiles deployed in the UK could be used based upon a joint governmental decision and a dual-key control system.[127] On June 7, 1958, procedures for carrying out the basic understanding concerning joint consultation before use of U.S. nuclear weapons based in the UK was arrived at with the signing of the Murphy-Dean Agreement. The agreement was subsequently approved by President Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The agreement applied only to RAF V bombers carrying U.S. nuclear weapons, the RAF Thor IRBM force which was not yet operational, and USAF SAC bomber units based in the UK.[128] On August 4, 1958, the U.S. and British signed a 144b Atomic Cooperation Agreement, formally known as the "Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Cooperation on the uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes”. On August 3, 1961, the U.S. and UK governments signed a NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement, which provided for the storage of nuclear weapons in the UK for U.S. and UK forces committed to NATO, as well as NATO-committed British forces stationed in Germany. There was an option to include at a later date NATO forces in the UK. The agreement did not apply to those U.S. and/or UK nuclear forces stationed in the UK who were not committed to NATO, such as the SAC rotational strategic bomber units in Britain.[129]

Greece: On December 30, 1959, the U.S. and Greek governments signed a secret nuclear stockpile agreement which permitted the U.S. military to begin construction of nuclear weapons storage and support facilities in Greece. On May 3, 1960, a nuclear stockpile technical agreement was signed by USAFE and the chief of staff of the Greek Air Force (this agreement was amended on August 28, 1961) permitting the USAF to provide nuclear weapons support to the Greek air force.[130]

Italy: On December 3, 1960, the U.S. and Italian governments signed an agreement entitled “Agreement for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes.” The agreement immediately ran into fierce opposition from the powerful Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), which opposed giving the Italians access to classified nuclear weapons information and technology because of deep concerns about the security of the Italian government and military.[131] On January 13, 1962, the U.S. and Italy signed a bilateral NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement, which was effected by an exchange of notes between the charge d'affaires at the U.S. embassy in Rome and the Italian Foreign Minister, Antonio Segni. On April 1, 1963, a supplemental agreement between U.S. and Italian militaries was signed which permitted the storage and use of nuclear weapons in Italy.[132]

Netherlands: On January 26, 1960, the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Chris Young, and a senior Dutch government official signed an Atomic Stockpile Agreement in The Hague allowing for the storage of U.S. nuclear weapons in the Netherlands. The U.S. agreed to pay all of the costs of building the necessary storage and maintenance facilities for the weapons in the Netherlands. On May 18, 1960, a “Technical Agreement” between the U.S. Army and the Royal Netherlands Army was signed permitting the U.S. to deploy nuclear weapons to the Netherlands in support of the nuclear-capable artillery units of the Dutch Army. On March 11, 1961, U.S. and Dutch officials in The Hague signed a Third Party NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement allowing the U.S. to provide nuclear weapons support to Dutch forces stationed in West Germany. Finally, on February 27, 1968 a ‘technical agreement' was signed by the U.S. and Dutch navies regarding technical modifications to the SP-2H Neptune maritime patrol aircraft belonging to the RDN 320 Squadron at Valkenburg to allow them to deliver nuclear depth bombs. The agreement also called for training of the Dutch crews in nuclear delivery techniques. From 1969 onwards the U.S. Navy allocated a small number of Mark 57 nuclear depth bombs to the Dutch navy.[133]

Portugal: To date, the only document found relating to the Portuguese government's approval of the deployment of nuclear weapons to Lajes Air Base in the Azores is an August 2, 1960 letter from the Portuguese Minister of Defense indicating that Lisbon had no objections to the presence of American ‘special weapons' on the Azores.[134]

Spain: There does not appear to have been a formal atomic stockpile agreement between the U.S. and Spain, although nuclear weapons were present in Spain as early as the late 1950s when Strategic Air Command bombers were based at three Spanish air bases, followed in the early 1960s by POLARIS ballistic missile submarines at Rota naval station in southern Spain. The U.S. government, however, did not offer to provide nuclear weapons support or training to the Spanish military, and the amount of information provided to the Spanish military was also kept to a minimum until Spain formally joined NATO in the 1970s.[135] As of 1976, all of the SAC bases and the POLARIS ballistic missile submarines had been withdrawn from Spain, leaving only a small number of nuclear ASW weapons still stored at Rota Naval Air Station.[136]

Turkey: On December 6, 1954, the U.S. and Turkish governments signed the so-called “Joint U.S.-Turkish Air Technical Annex,” a Top Secret supplement to the 1954 facilities agreement which allowed unfettered access by nuclear-armed SAC bombers to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. A separate agreement was signed five years later on February 28, 1959, between the Turkish General Staff and the U.S. Army, which permitted the U.S. to deploy to Turkey nuclear warheads for Turkish nuclear-capable artillery and missile systems. This agreement was amended on March 17, 1962, permitting the U.S. to deploy nuclear weapons to Turkey in support of the Turkish air force.[137]

Beginning in 1958, the U.S. military began secretly building a large base infrastructure throughout Western Europe to store several thousand nuclear weapons meant exclusively for use by America's NATO allies. According to one declassified February 1958 document, the U.S. military initially planned to build 63 nuclear weapons storage sites and six large command and support facilities in ten Western European countries in order to support the soon-to-arrive nuclear warheads meant for use by non-U.S. NATO countries. By mid-1961, the plan was to have constructed a total of 147 nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe servicing 175 NATO nuclear delivery units. Most of these nuclear storage facilities were to be located in West Germany. An estimated 2,750 American military personnel would be required to man and guard these extremely sensitive bases. At the time the U.S. already had forty nuclear weapons storage sites in Western Europe holding nuclear weapons and warheads meant exclusively for the use of U.S. forces in Europe. Construction of the first four NATO nuclear weapons storage sites began in the fall of 1958 at four British air bases in West Germany, which were to house CANBERRA bomber squadrons equipped with U.S. nuclear weapons, plus a site outside Paderborn, Germany, which was to house a British Army nuclear-capable CORPORAL missile regiment.[138]

Canada: This collection contains over one hundred documents concerning U.S.-Canadian nuclear weapons relations, most of which are available not from the U.S. National Archives, but rather from the Canadian National Archives in Ottawa. And what is contained in this collection is just a sampling of what is available to researchers. The essence of the 47 declassified Canadian documents is that the Canadian government was exceedingly careful about collaborating with the U.S. with regard to nuclear weapons. The Canadian government demanded, and got, the agreement of the U.S. to hold joint consultations if it became necessary to use nuclear weapons over Canadian soil in wartime. It also got the U.S. military to agree to keep it informed of all SAC bomber flights carrying nuclear weapons in Canadian airspace, as well as a separate agreement that called for Washington to inform Ottawa of any transport flights carrying nuclear weapons over Canada. In addition, Canada imposed tight restrictions on the U.S. nuclear weapons deployed to Canada, which irritated Washington to no end.[139]

Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Greenland: The only NATO countries that refused to have anything to do with nuclear weapons, including permitting the U.S. to deploy nuclear weapons on their soil or use their airspace, were Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. In the 1950s the U.S. government repeatedly tried to change the minds of these governments and allow U.S. nuclear weapons on their soil, or, at the very least, allow their militaries to train in the use of nuclear weapons. The declassified record, such as it is, shows that all three countries steadfastly refused.[140]

But there was one serious deviation from this norm. Without informing his cabinet, in November 1957 the Danish prime minister secretly allowed the U.S. Air Force to deploy nuclear weapons to Thule Air Base in Danish-controlled Greenland. The U.S. Defense Department wanted to deploy nuclear bombs for SAC strategic bombers and nuclear warheads for Nike-Hercules air defense missiles at Thule Air Base, which required the approval of the Danish government. On November 26, 1957, State Department sent a top secret letter informing the Pentagon that based on a confidential conversation with the Danish prime minister, the deployment of nuclear weapons to Greenland could begin. The Danish Prime Minister was “adamant that there would be no publicity of any kind about this matter now or later, and he has restricted knowledge of it to himself.” This decision was to later come back to haunt the Danish government after the discovery of the presence of American nuclear weapons on Danish soil in the 1990s.[141] In February 1958, the first SAC thermonuclear bombs were flown into Thule, but they were suddenly withdrawn between October and December 1958. In February 1959 the first nuclear warheads for Nike-Hercules SAM missiles were deployed to Greenland, but these too were withdrawn a few years later.[142]

The Use of Nuclear Weapons During World Crises

U.S. nuclear strike units were placed on alert and thermonuclear warheads were taken out of their storage igloos and placed on their delivery vehicles during a series of world crises:

1948 Berlin Crisis: On April 1, 1948, Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols of the Military Liaison Committee (MLC) briefed the AEC on the Berlin Crisis, telling the commissioners “this situation might well cause an incident which might in turn force war. Colonel Nichols stated that the Committee had already discussed certain possible steps with General McCormack and he also wished to discuss them with the Commissioners. The following points were suggested: The Commission should assure itself that in moving weapons to Site BAKER [the Killeen Base outside Fort Hood, Texas] complete weapons should be moved instead of unrelated components of weapons. The Commission installations should be alerted to be more watchful against possible sabotage matters; The military and the Commission should check into possible arrangements for turn over of some weapons to insure that there is no fumbling or delay in the transfer; Plans should be prepared for the formation of reserve assembly teams from civilians who have had prior experience on former assembly teams.”[143]

Korean War (1950-1953): The Truman administration considered using nuclear weapons at several points during the Korean War. The first came on the day after the North Korean invasion, when Truman's top advisors ordered the Pentagon to begin preparing contingency plans to drop atomic bombs on key Soviet military airfields in the Far East. At the time, the Truman administration believed that the North Koreans would not have invaded South Korea without Soviet approval and support. A small number of atomic bombs were readied for use, but SAC did not forward deploy any bombers to Guam or other points in the Far East in preparation for actually using the weapons.[144] In July 1950 SAC began preparing to deploy a force of nuclear-capable B-29 bombers and a number of nuclear weapons to Great Britain to threaten the USSR with nuclear retaliation if the military situation in Korea continued to worsen.[145] At the same time, the Pentagon and the State Department began considering the use of nuclear weapons against North Korean forces because the military situation in Korea was deteriorating rapidly.[146] After Chinese forces intervened in the fighting in Korea in late October 1950, the U.S. government and military began contingency planning for using nuclear weapons against the Chinese military both in Korea and on key Chinese military targets in Manchuria. The Pentagon and the State Department recommended not using nuclear weapons, because it would almost certainly bring the USSR into the war. But as the military situation continued to worsen in December 1950, pressure continued to mount from the American public and within the U.S. government to use America's nuclear arsenal to save the military situation in Korea.[147] In 1953, just before the armistice was signed ending the Korean War, the Eisenhower administration, angry about continued Chinese stalling tactics at the peace talks, warned China that it was prepared to use nuclear weapons to end the war.[148]

Taiwan Strait Crisis 1954-1955: During the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954-1955, the U.S. military prepared a series of contingency plans to drop atomic bombs on Chinese military and civilian targets if the Chinese threatened to invade the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, which were held by Chinese Nationalist troops. There was also concern at the time that the Chinese might be preparing to invade Taiwan itself. [149]

1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis: When China threatened to invade the Chinese Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the summer of 1958, the U.S. once again began preparing to drop atomic bombs on several dozen Chinese military airfields opposite Taiwan if the military situation deteriorated to the point that the atomic bombs were the only way to save the islands.[150]

1961 Berlin Crisis: During the 1961 Berlin Wall crisis, the U.S. and NATO prepared contingency plans calling for the deployment of U.S. nuclear delivery systems and their associated warheads from their barracks and storage depots as a means of deterring the Soviets from taking further military action against the Allied-controlled enclaves in West Berlin.[151]

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: Over a hundred NORAD air defense fighter interceptors armed with GENIE nuclear air defense weapons were placed on alert throughout the southern and southeastern U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis to guard against a surprise Soviet nuclear air attack on U.S. cities by IL-28 bombers based in Cuba.[152] The JCS directed General Truman Landon, commander of USAFE, to immediately begin loading his QRA nuclear alert force with thermonuclear weapons. The 523rd and 613th Tactical Fighter Squadrons of the 27th and 401st Tactical Fighter Wings were ordered to load thermonuclear weapons onto the sixteen F-100 fighter bombers that were then standing on 15-minute QRA nuclear alert at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.[153]

Vietnam War: The U.S. government and military never seriously contemplated using nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War, although a series of studies were conducted to determine if these weapons could be used effectively in Indochina. The studies all concluded that nuclear weapons would not be an effective weapon in a counterinsurgency environment such as existed at the time in Southeast Asia. There were too few targets, and the targets that were available would cause no significant damage to the North Vietnamese war effort.[154]

Security and Safety Threats to U.S. Nuclear Weapons

This collection contains over one hundred declassified U.S. government and military documents pertaining to the safety and security of nuclear weapons. These documents cover a host of highly sensitive subjects, such as faulty weapons design, vulnerability of certain weapons to theft or unauthorized use, and an alarming general lack of interest in nuclear weapons safety and security issues inside the Pentagon during the 1950s and early 1960s. The documents show that the vital question of protecting the weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal from theft or unauthorized use did not begin to receive any high level attention until the Kennedy administration (1961-1963), when the White House ordered that special security devices called Permissive Action Link (PAL) devices be installed on every weapon, especially those deployed overseas in Europe and Asia.[155]

  • In October 1958, USAF Master Sergeant Leander V. Cunningham, 41, one of six senior nuclear weapons technicians, locked himself inside a nuclear weapons storage bunker at RAF Sculthorpe in England and threatened to detonate a nuclear weapon with his pistol. He later gave himself up.[156]
  • The safety and security of U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey has been a perennial problem for the U.S. government because of the political instability of that country over the past fifty years, the unreliability of the Turkish military, as well as the presence of several armed left-wing and right-wing terrorist groups that operated freely inside Turkey. After two failed military coup d'état attempts in Turkey in 1960, in 1961 the newly elected Kennedy administration issued a directive entitled NSAM 143 which barred the deployment of Mark 28 thermonuclear bombs to Turkey because they were not protected from unauthorized use by Permissive Action Link (PAL) security devices. Two years later, in 1963, the Mk 28 bombs still had not been deployed to Turkey because of continuing concern within the U.S. State Department about the stability of the Turkish government and the security of American nuclear weapons in Turkey.[157]
  • A 1961 DOE document revealed that the Mk 7 and Mk 12 nuclear bombs, which at the time were widely deployed in Western Europe with U.S. and NATO nuclear-capable fighter bomber squadron standing QRA alert, had virtually no safety features to prevent these weapons from being used by unauthorized personnel. The same was true of the W49 warhead used on the USAF's JUPITER ballistic missile station in Italy and Turkey, which was manned by Italian and Turkish air force personnel but could not be used without the authorization of the small USAF nuclear custodial units stationed with the missile.[158]
  • 1967 Greek Military Coup: On April 21, 1967, in the midst of a coup d'état, Greek military units surrounded the U.S. Army nuclear weapons storage depot at Elevsis outside Athens that was controlled by the 558th U.S. Army Artillery Group. The Greek troops were withdrawn after protests from the U.S. embassy.[159]
  • 1967 Cyprus Crisis: On November 22, 1967, the commander of TUSLOG Detachment 67 at Cakmakli, Turkey, reported to Special Ammunition Support Command (SASCOM) in Frankfurt, Germany, that “Extraordinary security precautions have been taken by this headquarters to safeguard [nuclear] weapons. Planning for various contingencies continues.”[160]
  • September 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre: Nuclear terrorism only became a subject of high interest to the U.S. government and military after the September 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack, because the attack took place in West Germany, where some five thousand U.S. nuclear weapons were stored. In the aftermath of the Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes, the U.S. Secretary of Defense ordered the JCS and the military services to conduct a worldwide survey of the security of U.S. nuclear weapons deployed overseas. As a result of these surveys a number of nuclear weapons storage sites in vulnerable locations were closed and the security at other sites was strengthened.[161] The JCAE reported that the Defense Department had closed 97 nuclear weapons storage sites in 1974 and 1975.[162] However, the documents in this collection show that it was not until the early 1980s, during the Reagan administration, that the U.S. government and military began spending large sums of money to secure the U.S. nuclear arsenal against terrorists.[163]
  • March 1973: Because of pressure from the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) relating to security concerns, nuclear weapons were removed from QRA aircraft at an airbase in an unspecified European country.[164]
  • 1974 Cyprus Crisis: On July 20, 1974, the U.S. Air Force nuclear weapons custodial units in Greece and Turkey pulled all weapons off Greek and Turkish fighter bombers standing Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) alert, and the 558th U.S. Army Artillery Group took all nuclear warheads off all the Greek Nike-Hercules  SAM missiles deployed around Athens. Detachments from the U.S. Marine BLT on U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet warships in the eastern Mediterranean were prepared to fly into Turkey in helicopters to secure the nuclear weapons if the Turkish military threatened to seize the weapons' storage sites.[165]
  • February 6, 1975: Senator John Pastore (D-Rhode Island), Senator Howard Baker (R-Tennessee) and Rep. George Murphy briefed President Gerald Ford in the Oval Office about the findings of their visit to Europe investigating nuclear weapons' security deficiencies. Senator Pastore urged Ford to fix the problems identified in the report as quickly as possible.[166] Senator Pastore later publicly revealed that a two year-old secret report had detailed numerous deficiencies at U.S. Army nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe, including the fact that in 1972 more than two hundred soldiers involved in nuclear weapons' security had been relieved of duty for a variety of reasons, 83 of them for drug abuse.[167]
  • June 30, 1976: The JCAE reported that the Defense Department had closed 97 nuclear weapons storage sites in 1974 and 1975.[168]
  • March 16, 1981: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report on the status of its nuclear weapons' security enhancement program, the Long Range Security Program (LRSP), in Europe revealed that ACE's European Division was supervising work in progress at 107 nuclear and chemical weapons storage sites in five countries: West Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Netherlands. The LRSP upgrades included security improvements at the sole U.S. chemical weapons storage site at Clausen, Germany. These sites provided nuclear weapons support to the military forces of eight NATO countries: the United States, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, The Netherlands, and Great Britain. Site breakdown by country: West Germany: 81 sites; Italy: 12 sites; Greece: 7 sites; Turkey: 5 sites; Netherlands: 2 sites.[169]

Nuclear Intelligence

This collection is the first comprehensive attempt to compile in one place all of the relevant declassified documents concerning the USAF's ultra-secretive nuclear intelligence gathering unit, the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC). Abhorring publicity in any form, AFTAC and its antecedents have been responsible since 1947 for operating the U.S. government's Atomic Energy Detection System (AEDS), which is responsible for detecting and analyzing all foreign nuclear weapons tests and related activities.[170]

AFTAC's nuclear weapons intelligence collection, processing and analytic work is generically referred to within the U.S. intelligence community as nuclear intelligence (NUCINT), which includes intelligence information about nuclear events obtained from the collection of gaseous, liquid or solid nuclear materials, such as radioactive effluents, particulates, or debris. NUCINT sensors also monitor radio frequency emissions, such as wideband electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from nuclear tests; nuclear radiation emissions, such as X-Ray, Gamma-Ray, and Neutron emissions from the nuclear weapons themselves; and geophysical phenomena in order to detect and evaluate nuclear tests, including acoustic, seismic, and magnetic waves. Finally, radio frequency emitters are monitored to detect nuclear weapons tests, such as Wideband EMP and unintentional radiation (RINT).

This collection contains a number of important documents concerning the mission and nuclear test detection capabilities of AFTAC and its predecessor organizations throughout the Cold War era above and beyond the several dozen declassified documents about the AEDS already published in previous Brill document collections.[171]

The collection also contains a sizeable number of documents describing how AFTAC established, in conjunction with Great Britain, a global network of ground-based collection units whose mission was to detect foreign nuclear weapons tests using a variety of techniques, such as sophisticated seismic and acoustic intelligence sensors, as well as a number of secret airborne units (usually using the cover of the USAF's Air Weather Service) that were responsible for conducting aerial nuclear sampling missions after each and every Soviet or other foreign nuclear weapons blast.[172]

AFTAC started as a very small and compact organization of only a couple hundred military and civilian personnel, but slowly grew in size and sophistication as Soviet nuclear weapons tests became more numerous, and the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons proliferated. Beginning in 1964 and continuing for the rest of the decade, AFTAC and its British counterparts dramatically expanded the size of their AEDS detection networks in Asia and Australasia because of the first Chinese nuclear weapons test in 1964, followed by the move of the French nuclear test ground to the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia in 1966.[173]

Compared with its much larger cousins, the CIA and NSA, the AEDS has always been a relatively modest endeavor. At its peak in the early 1970s, AFTAC, operating under the covername Project CLEAR SKY, maintained a headquarters and analytic center at Patrick AFB, Florida. In comparison to the CIA and NSA staffs, AFTAC's was tiny. As of 1972, it consisted of only 1,857 military personnel and 102 civilians, who manned a worldwide network of forty manned detachments and 49 unmanned operating locations in 35 countries that monitored foreign nuclear weapons tests around the clock.

As of 1984, AFTAC's thirteen hundred military and civilian personnel were operating more than twenty manned detachments, four small manned operating locations, and more than fifty unmanned equipment locations in the U.S. and 35 countries around the world that were engaged in monitoring foreign nuclear weapons testing activities.[174]


Table 5: AFTAC Order of Battle - 1984

Manned AFTAC Operating Detachments
23 manned operating detachments, of which three were in the process of being reduced to unmanned Equipment Locations (EL) by the end of 1986.

  1. Detachment 045: Buckley ANGB, Colorado
  2. Detachment 046: Falcon AFS, Colorado
  3. Detachment 057: Lowry AFB, Colorado
  4. Detachment 063: Patrick AFB, Florida (AFTAC HQ)
  5. Detachment 301: Belbasi Seismic Research Station, Turkey
  6. Detachment 313: Sonseca Seismic Research Station, Spain
  7. Detachment 315: Iraklion AS, Greece
  8. Detachment 348: RAF Lakenheath, UK
  9. Detachment 360: Keflavik AS, Iceland (possibly EL 360)
  10. Detachment 370: RAF Edzell, UK
  11. Detachment 372: Ascension Island (possibly EL 372)
  12. Detachment 377: Bad Aibling Station, Germany
  13. Detachment 401: Clark AB, Philippines
  14. Detachment 407: Yokota AB, Japan
  15. Detachment 415: Chiang Mai, Thailand
  16. Detachment 421: Alice Springs, Australia
  17. Detachment 422: Misawa AS, Japan
  18. Detachment 423: Delmonte Plantation, Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, Philippines
  19. Detachment 428: Andersen AFB, Guam (possibly EL 428)
  20. Detachment 452: Camp Long, Wonju, South Korea
  21. Detachment 459: Pinedale Seismic Research Facility, Boulder, Wyoming
  22. Detachment 460: Eielson AFB, Alaska
  23. Detachment 471: Elmendorf AFB, Alaska

AFTAC Manned Operating Locations (OL)

  1. OL AX: Sunnyvale AFS, California
  2. OL AY: Livermore, California
  3. OL BE: Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
  4. OL BN: Howard AB, Panama
  5. OL FH: Los Angeles AFS, California
  6. OL VE: Alexandria, Virginia

AFTAC, whose headquarters is located at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, is still going strong today, but it is much smaller than it was thirty years ago thanks to the incorporation of new technologies and a diminished threat spectrum that it needs to monitor (North Korea is the only nation still testing nuclear weapons). Today, AFTAC operates twenty-five seismic arrays and eleven single-instrument locations consisting of seismometers and associated data acquisition systems and workstations, seven hydroacoustic recording stations, a small number of specialized reconnaissance aircraft engaged in airborne nuclear particulate collection, and over a hundred sensors mounted on several dozen VELA and GPS satellites that are designed to detect the unique signatures of atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions.[175]

Keeping U.S. Chemical and Biological Weapons Programs Secret

Virtually all Americans during the Cold War era knew that their country possessed nuclear weapons, and virtually everyone in America had some opinion as to whether they liked “The Bomb” or not. But very few Americans knew anything at all about the even more secretive U.S. programs to develop and build chemical and biological weapons. This should not come as a surprise, since the American mainstream press in those days rarely wrote anything substantive about chemical or biological weapons, and almost no one on Capitol Hill paid any attention to the subject, despite the fact that these weapons were, to some degree, far more lethal than nuclear weapons.

This is exactly the way the American presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike, who occupied the White House between 1945 and the end of the Cold War in 1991 liked it. The last thing Washington wanted was for a public debate over the need for these weapons, much less the morality of using them on the battlefield or against innocent civilians.

From a public relations standpoint, chemical and biological weapons were deemed to be so toxic politically that in 1946 the White House and the Pentagon ordered that everything concerning these weapons be treated as Top Secret, with only a few senior U.S. government and military officials given access to high-level policy information about these weapons.[176] Not only was there no high-level oversight of the chemical and biological weapons programs, but the ban on the release of information about these two programs was so extreme that virtually nothing was disclosed to Congress about these activities until the 1960s. The U.S. Army, which was responsible for developing and building these weapons, did not submit a formal report to Congress about their work on these weapons until 1977, more than thirty years after the end of World War II![177]

The U.S. Chemical Weapons Program

Although few people realize it, chemical weapons were America's first WMD program, with the American chemical warfare program tracing its originals back over a century to America's entry into World War I in November 1917.[178]

During World War I, the U.S. Army's Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) manufactured 5,770 tons of chemical agents and filled weapons, including 1,400 tons of phosgene gas and 175 tons of the more lethal mustard gas. Although the U.S. never deployed chemical weapons on the Western Front in Europe, it had begun large-scale production of an improved lethal gas known as Lewisite for use in an offensive planned for early 1919. By the time the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, a U.S. Army munitions plant near Willoughby, Ohio, was producing ten tons of Lewisite a day, for a total of about 150 tons produced during the war.[179]

The horrible impact that gas warfare had made on the soldiers and the civilian populace in Europe led to international efforts to ban toxic chemical weapons. After the war, the U.S. was party to the Washington Arms Conference Treaty of 1922, which would have banned chemical weapons. The treaty, however, never was approved because the French government refused to sign it. Then there was the 1925 Geneva Convention, whose effectiveness was limited because some nations, including the United States, reserved the right to maintain stockpiles as deterrence against first use by other parties. This allowed the U.S. Army to secretly continue to stockpile chemical weapons, which by the time World War II began in 1939 exceeded 30,000 tons of lethal chemical munitions, mostly mustard gas.

Prior to Pearl Harbor, almost all of the U.S. Army's chemical weapons research, development and production activities were centered on the Edgewood Arsenal north of Baltimore, Maryland. After America entered World War II, Congress authorized funds to build vast new chemical weapons factories at the Huntsville Arsenal outside Huntsville, Alabama, the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal north of Denver, Colorado.[180]

America's largest chemical weapons plant was the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, located on a 17,238-acre tract of land outside Commerce City, Colorado, north of Denver. The plant was built in 1942 by the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers for the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) to manufacture mustard gas and Lewisite chemical weapons. Most of the chemical weapons manufacturing facilities were concentrated on 260-acres in the center of the facility away from the prying eyes of uncleared civilians. The Arsenal produced its first batch of mustard gas on January 1, 1943. It ceased work on the production of chemical agents shortly after Japan's surrender in September 1945.[181]

During World War II, the U.S. Army's Chemical Warfare Service produced a staggering 146,000 metric tons of toxic chemical agents, primarily phosgene (CG), hydrogen cyanide (AC), cyanogen chloride (CK), and mustard gas (H). There were, as yet, no nerve gas weapons in the U.S. arsenal. The only new chemical agent that the CWS developed and produced during the war was a purer and more lethal form of mustard gas called Distilled Mustard Agent (HD), which went into production in 1945 just before the end of the war.[182]

Most of these weapons remained inside bunkers at a small number of U.S. Army storage depots in the U.S. However, tens of thousands of tons of mustard and lewisite gas weapons were shipped from the U.S. to Great Britain, Italy and Australia during the war and were kept ready for use if needed. Fortunately, the order to employ these awful weapons was never given.[183]

The Evolution of U.S. National Policy on Chemical Warfare

The evolution of U.S. chemical warfare policy during the Cold War was somewhat convoluted, in part because these weapons were inherently unpopular both with the American public and among many senior White House officials and top military commanders.[184]

The fundamental tenet of the U.S. chemical weapons policy both during World War II and throughout the Cold War was the doctrine of “no first use.” In May 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the United States' policy of using chemical weapons only in retaliation, stating that if the Japanese were to use chemical weapons, “retaliation in kind and in full measure will be meted out.” A year later, on June 8, 1943, Roosevelt told the press that “we shall under no circumstances resort to the use of such [chemical] weapons unless they are first used by our enemies.”[185] This “no first use/retaliation only” national policy was later reaffirmed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960 and again by President Richard Nixon in November 1969.[186]

For most of the Cold War, the U.S. government's official policy was that chemical and biological weapons would not be used except in retaliation for such an attack on the United States or its allies. This basic concept was embodied in a series of Top Secret NSC directives, starting with NSC 62 in February 1950, which stated that “The United States will undertake gas warfare only in retaliation against its use by an enemy and on the decision of the Commander-in-Chief.”[187]

Behind the scenes, however, the declassified documents in this collection show that the ‘unofficial' chemical warfare policy of the U.S. government was significantly different. The U.S. military, especially the top brass of the U.S. Army, never agreed with the “no first use/retaliation only” U.S. government policy, and they spent the entire Cold War period trying to undermine and change this policy to allow U.S. military commanders greater flexibility to use these weapons if, in the Pentagon's opinion, the circumstances warranted.[188]

It was not until the Nixon administration took office in January 1969 that the first full-scale critical review of the U.S. government's CW and BW policies and posture was undertaken, which led to the termination of all American work on biological weapons and the suspension of the U.S. chemical weapons program. The Gerald R. Ford administration that followed continued Nixon's policy of keeping the U.S. chemical weapons program to a standby status despite fierce opposition from the Pentagon, which wanted money to build a new generation of chemical weapons called binary chemical munitions.[189]

The Soviet Threat

The adherents of a more aggressive chemical and biological weapons policy inside the Pentagon used every weapon in their arsenal to try to convince successive administrations inside the White House of their point of view.

The first argument that the adherents of BW and CW used over and over again throughout the Cold War was that the U.S. military needed chemical and biological weapons to offset the large military manpower advantage that the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies enjoyed over the U.S. and NATO. Those individuals who made this argument did not see chemical or biological weapons as a deterrent against Soviet aggression, but rather as battlefield weapons no different than conventional artillery or bombs. Unsurprisingly, the CW-BW proponents inside the U.S. military rejected the U.S. government national policy that the U.S. would never use these weapons first, and would only use these weapons in retaliation if the Soviets or their allies were to use theirs first.[190]

Among the top arguments the chemical/biological warfare proponents inside the Pentagon made was that the Soviets would almost certainly use their stockpile of chemical and biological weapons in the event of hostilities. Therefore, they argued, the U.S. military should do the same.[191]

But arguably the most persuasive argument that they could make was that according to the U.S. intelligence community, the Soviets possessed a chemical and biological weapons stockpile that was vastly larger and more modern than that possessed by the U.S.[192] A 1951 USAF report stated that the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile consisted of only 15,000 tons of chemical agents and munitions, almost all of which had been manufactured during World War II, compared with an estimated 500,000 tons of chemical agents and munitions possessed by the USSR. The Soviets also reportedly possessed 16,000 tons of newly manufactured sarin-type nerve agents, compared with only 580 tons of sarin and Tabun nerve agents that the U.S. had captured from Nazi Germany at the end of World War II.[193]

To make matters worse, much of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile was not useable. In December 1951, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps informed the U.S. Air Force that all 317,000 of its M70 chemical bombs filled with mustard gas had deteriorated to the point that they were no longer useable, and that it would take three to five years to develop and produce a replacement bomb.[194]

Many of these estimates held that the Soviets possessed a massive chemical weapons stockpile of between 200,000 and 300,000 agent tons, including 40,000 to 50,000 tons of nerve gas. Where these figures came from was never revealed in the estimates, nor was there any elucidation as to the accuracy of these figures or an assessment of the reliability of the source(s) for this information.

In fact, the U.S. intelligence community knew virtually nothing about the Soviet capabilities in the areas of chemical and biological warfare until the very end of the Cold War. The only sources available to the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community after the end of World War II about Soviet CBW activities came from captured German and Japanese documents and a tiny smattering of former German and Japanese intelligence officers, who traded their knowledge for immunity from prosecution and a relatively decent salary (with fringe benefits) from the U.S. intelligence community. But the quantity and quality of the information these people were able to provide was low, at best, mostly taking the form of rumors masquerading as hard intelligence.[195]

The U.S. Army Chemical Corps Takes Over the Chemical Weapons Program

After the end of World War II, the U.S. Army retained the responsibility for developing and manufacturing new chemical weapons agents and weapons systems, and the Army General Staff delegated the work to the newly created U.S. Army Chemical Corps, which replaced the former Chemical Warfare Service on August 2, 1946 .[196]


Table 6: Chiefs of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps: 1941-1962

Major General William N. Porter

May 31, 1941 - November 28, 1945

Major General Alden H. Waitt

November 29, 1945 - September 30, 1949

Major General Anthony C. McAuliffe

October 1, 1949 - July 31, 1951

Major General Egbert F. Bullene

August 25, 1951 - March 31, 1954

Major General William M. Creasy

May 7, 1954 - August 31, 1958

Major General Marshall Stubbs

September 1, 1958 - July 31, 1962


The new-born U.S. Army Chemical Corps inherited a bleak situation. In the postwar peacetime environment, and with America being the world's sole nuclear superpower, there was no perceived need for a large stockpile of chemical weapons by either the White House or senior Pentagon officials. Unlike for nuclear weaponry, there was no comparable high-level constituency inside the U.S. government for chemical weapons. There is little documentary evidence that any of the American presidents since Harry Truman had any personal interest in chemical or biological weaponry, focusing their attention instead of nuclear weapons. Moreover, money was in short supply, so high-level interest in spending precious fiscal resources on chemical weapons' research and development declined dramatically. In 1947, Congress cut two‑thirds of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps' budget, and the Dugway Proving Ground, the Army's principal open-air chemical and biological weapons test site, was closed.[197]

Unlike America's nuclear weapons program, which over time has gained wide acceptance in America, the U.S. chemical weapons program never achieved anywhere near the same level of acceptance with the American public. With the exception of a small number of devotees within the U.S. Army, chemical weapons did not develop much of a supportive constituency within the U.S. government or the military. Much of this attitude stemmed from memories of the horrors of gas warfare on the Western Front during World War I, which killed or maimed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides of the battlefield, including thousands of American soldiers. Because of the revulsion spawned by the memories of World War I, the U.S. came close to banning the production or use of chemical weapons after the end of the war.[198]

This meant that the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, became the sole constituency promoting the development and production of chemical and biological weapons during the Cold War.

Despite these obstacles, somehow the U.S. Army's chemical weapons program survived the postwar period, mainly because a small number of high-ranking U.S. military officials felt that the U.S. needed to retain a large chemical weapons stockpile. A high-level Defense Department investigatory panel emphasized this, stating in its top secret final report that the "vigorous development of agents and weapons in the BW and CW fields is essential to the national security.”[199]

Because of the cloak of secrecy covering all its work—most of the records of the Chemical Corps remain classified today—available evidence indicates that the U.S. Army Chemical Corps was able to do pretty much what it wanted with minimal interference from the Pentagon or the White House. As a result the U.S. Army Chemical Corps was allowed to continue to retain a significant stockpile of lethal chemical weapons after World War II, mostly in the form of hundreds of thousands of chemical bombs meant for delivery by USAF B-29 bombers, including 96,000 500-lb and 1,000-lb bombs filled with phosgene, hydrocyanic acid, and cyanogen chloride gas, and almost 300,000 100-lb and 115-lb bombs filled with the more lethal mustard gas. All of these weapons were fairly modern, having been manufactured during World War II. There were also hundreds of thousands of mortar and artillery shells, rockets and land mines that contained phosgene and mustard gas that were meant for use by the U.S. Army in time of war.[200]

Research and development on new chemical weapons continued. After the end of World War II, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps shipped thousands of captured German nerve gas weapons to the U.S., so that they could be studied and reverse-engineered, thus enabling the production of American versions of these weapons. U.S. Army records show that between May 1945 and June 1947, over 40,000 tabun bombs, 21,000 mustard gas bombs, 2,700 mustard gas rockets, and 750 tabun-filled artillery shells were shipped from Germany to the U.S. and put into storage at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah.[201]

By the time the Korean War began in June 1950, the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile had fallen on hard times because of a lack of money and/or high-level attention. The U.S. Army Chemical Corps had stockpiled thousands of tons of lethal chemical weapons, but relatively few of them were serviceable. In fact, many of the weapons in the U.S. arsenal at the time had been manufactured as early as during World War I or shortly thereafter.


Table 7:.The U.S. Chemical Weapons Stockpile: April 1952

Munition

Agent

Quantity (tons)

Service

Condition

Shell, 4.2-inch mortar

CG

377.000

Army

Unserviceable

 

H

327.000

Army

Unserviceable

 

H

1.400

Navy

Unknown

Shell, 105mm how

H

88.000

Navy

Unknown

 

HD

537.000

Army

Serviceable

Shell, 155mm how

H

45.000

Navy

Unknown

 

HD

15.847

Army

Serviceable

Shell, 155mm gun, M104

H

10.500

Navy

Unknown

Shell, 75mm how

H

10.000

Navy

Unknown

M70 Bombs

H

292.000

USAF

Unserviceable

M78 Bombs, 500-lb.

CG and CK

31.000

USAF

Unknown

 

CG and CK

3.100

Navy

Unknown

M79 Bombs, 1,000-lb.

CG and CK

5.600

USAF

Unknown

 

CG and CK

6.400

Navy

Unknown

Rockets, 7.2-inch

CG

6.766

Army

Unknown

 

CG

15.000

Navy

Unknown

         

Bulk Agents

H and HD

20.637

   

Bulk Agents

CG

5.615

   

Bulk Agents

CK

-

   

KEY

  • H = Mustard Gas
  • HD = Distilled Mustard Gas
  • CG = Phosgene
  • CK = Cyanogen chloride

SOURCE: U.S. Army, Memorandum, Chemical and Biological Warfare Readiness, April 23, 1952, Top Secret.


On June 30, 1950, five days after North Korean troops invaded South Korea, a committee chaired by Dr. Earl P. Stevenson (the official name of the committee was the Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare) sent a report to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson recommending that the Pentagon resume research and development work on a new generation of chemical and biological weapons to counter the growing Soviet threat. The Stevenson Committee also urged the Pentagon to consider doing away with the policy of only using its chemical arsenal in retaliation for the use of similar weapons against the United States; in other words, allow the U.S. military to use these deadly instruments as first strike weapons in order to counterbalance the Soviets' huge advantage in military manpower.[202]

To get the Pentagon to resume working on chemical and biological weaponry, the Stevenson Committee used the age-old method of citing what they perceived as the growing Soviet chemical weapons threat. U.S. and British intelligence estimates on the state of the Soviet chemical and biological warfare stockpile were all over the map at the time, principally because there was virtually no hard information available in the later 1940s and 1950s about what the Soviets were doing in the field of toxic chemical and biological weaponry. In June 1952, the British Joint Intelligence Committee – on what factual basis remains unknown – estimated that the Soviets had 120,000 tons of older mustard gas-type weapons and 18,000 tons of newer weaponry filled with the German nerve agent tabun (GA).[203] An August 1952 American intelligence estimate held that the Soviets had somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 metric tons of older “mustard gas” type chemical weapons, plus another 12,000 to 15,000 metric tons of nerve gas munitions. It should come as no surprise that U.S. intelligence estimates of Soviet chemical and biological warfare capabilities were always substantially larger than those of their British counterparts.[204]

On October 27, 1950, the newly appointed Secretary of Defense, George C. Marshall, partially approved the report's recommendations, allocating to the Army the huge sum of 200 million dollar to finance an expansion of both the chemical and biological weapons programs, and ordering the Army Chemical Corps to begin immediate construction of facilities capable of producing sarin nerve gas weapons. But Marshall, himself a veteran of the bloody carnage on the Western Front during World War I, chose not to approve the panel's recommendation that would have allowed the Pentagon to use CW and BW as first strike weapons. General Marshall's decision was to open the door for the U.S. military to quickly develop and build a wide array of new chemical and biological weapons in the decade that followed.[205]

During the Korean War (1950-1953), the U.S. Army Chemical Corps spent tens of millions of dollars building up the staff and physical infrastructure necessary to develop and produce a wide range of chemical and biological weapons. Between June 1950 and September 1951 the Army Chemical Corp's research budget tripled from 10 million to 30 million dollar, the number of researchers working on weapon projects increased from 2,100 to 3,700, and the Dugway Proving Grounds in the remote Utah desert was quietly reopened after a five-year hiatus on July 1, 1950 to resume testing chemical as well as biological weapons.[206]

The Chemical Corps' main focus was to develop and produce as quickly as possible a wide range of weapons filled with the deadly nerve gas sarin (GB), a highly volatile, odorless liquid developed by German chemists before World War II that turned into a gas, attacked the nervous system and killed quickly.[207] Responding to Secretary of Defense Marshall's October 27, 1950 directive, the JCS and the Army staff gave the sarin weapons production project one of the highest priority designations in the military and even its own codeword (SKELP), which allowed the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to bypass normal U.S. government contracting and procurement channels, as well as the normal military chain of command, in order to secretly build the factories to produce the sarin-filled weapons.[208]

The scientists and engineers working for the U.S. Army Chemical Corps quickly developed a series of chemical cluster bombs that were designed to carry the lethal nerve gas sarin to targets deep inside the USSR. By the end of September 1951, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps had nearly completed the development of America's first sarin-filled bomb, the E101. By the end of December 1952, the 1,000-lb. E101RE CW cluster bomb was ready for production, each filled with 76 E54R6 GB-filled bomblets. The Army chemical corps was also in the process of perfecting the design of new GB-filled 105mm and 155mm artillery shells, a 4.5mm GB rocket for use against area targets, and a 4.2-inch mortar shell filled with sarin nerve gas. By September 1953, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps engineers at the Edgewood Arsenal north of Baltimore had begun work on a 750-lb. cluster bomb designed specifically to dispense sarin-filled bomblets from low-flying supersonic fighter bombers, as well as a GB-filled 1,000-lb cluster bomb (E101R3), which was also designed for use with high-performance fighter bomber aircraft.[209]

With all these new weapons having been designed, now the issue became how to turn the design blueprints into actual sarin-filled chemical weapons. In July 1950, less than a month after the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the chief of the Army Chemical Corps, Major General Anthony C. McAuliffe, ordered the immediate design of a plant that could produce thirty tons of sarin nerve gas per day. The name given to the project was Project GIBBET. In November 1950, contractors hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps began building two plants to produce sarin (GB) nerve gas weapons. The first plant was located on the grounds of a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) facility at Muscle Shoals in northern Alabama (whose covername was the “Muscle Shoals Phosphate Development Works”). The second and more important complex was located at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal north of Denver, Colorado, which was to produce the sarin gas itself and fill weapons with the agent. Both plants were completed in May 1953, and the production of weapons carrying the sarin nerve agent began in July 1953 at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.[210]

The Pentagon wanted a massive sarin nerve gas stockpile to complement the fast growing U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. And that is exactly what the U.S. Army Chemical Corps gave them. The preliminary plan devised in 1952 called for producing a staggering 22,000 tons of sarin nerve gas by July 1, 1954, which was to fill over one million 105mm artillery shells, 560,000 155mm artillery shells, almost 1.3 million 4.2-inch sarin-filled mortar shells, and over 200,000 cluster bombs. But that was not enough for the U.S. military. By 1957, the Pentagon wanted 50,000 tons of sarin-filled weapons for the Army, 76,000 tons for the Air Force, and 5,000 tons for the Navy, for an eye-popping total of 131,000 tons of sarin-filled bombs, rockets and artillery shells by the end of 1957.[211]

Unlike nuclear weapons, which are slowly and carefully built by hand by skilled technicians, chemical weapons are produced on an assembly line by machinery – not unlike a what one would find at a Coca Cola bottling plant. Hundreds of weapons can be produced each day. So giving the Pentagon what it wanted did not pose much of a problem for the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. All the Corps needed was money to fill the Pentagon's order.

The first sarin-filled weapon produced at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was the M34 1,000-lb. cluster bomb, which contained 108-lbs. of sarin nerve agent inside 76 bomblets that were dispensed once the bomb exploded in mid-air. Between December 1954 and the end of 1957, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal produced almost 24,000 M34 and M34A1 sarin-filled cluster bombs for the USAF, which were kept stored inside dozens of munitions storage igloos at the Arsenal.[212] The M34/M34A1 remained the principal sarin-filled bomb in the U.S. arsenal until 1959, when the Army Chemical Corps produced a lighter (750-lbs) and more aerodynamic GB-filled bomb called the MC-1.[213] At the same time the Chemical Corps began building a wide assortment of other sarin-filled weapons for the U.S. military, including aircraft spray tanks, 105mm, 155mm and 8-inch artillery shells, a 4.5-inch rocket, and the 4.2-inch sarin-filled mortar shell, all of which began coming off the production line at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in 1954.[214]

The number of sarin-filled weapons produced were staggering. For example, by June 1955 the Rocky Mountain arsenal had produced 14,000 sarin-filled 155mm artillery shells alone.[215] By 1957, enough sarin-filled bombs, rockets and artillery shells had been produced that the U.S. Army Chemical Corps terminated production of the weapons and put the production lines at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal on standby status until such time as more supply of sarin was needed.[216]

As the first batches of sarin-filled weapons began coming off the production line at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in 1954, the Department of Defense began drawing up plans to deploy these new weapons overseas. In June 1954, the JCS approved the deployment of chemical weapons to the Far East, and by implication, to Europe as well. This was followed by the approval of the Secretary of Defense for the deployment of chemical weapons to the Far East in August 1954. On August 27, 1954, the JCS informed CINCFE in Tokyo that the “Secretary of Defense has approved the shipment of toxic chemical munitions to Far East Command (FEC). Advise when shipment desired.”[217]

But with the end of the Korean War, Washington immediately cut back on spending on weapons deemed to be in excess of requirements, which included chemical weapons. Starting in the mid- to late-1950s the U.S. government and military dramatically de-emphasized the use of chemical weapons, and focus and resources were shifted to nuclear operations in a future war. As spending on chemical weapons dropped, so did the momentum of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps' chemical weapons program. Funding for research and development of new CW weapons flatlined and began to decrease by 1955. Worse still, high-level interest within the Department of Defense and the U.S. Army senior staff in the Chemical Corps noticeably declined after senior White House and Pentagon officials decided not to deploy the new generation of nerve gas weapons overseas.[218] By 1957, the Army's chemical warfare program had come to a near-complete halt, with one report noting that a “creeping paralysis” had taken hold at the sarin (GB) production plant at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado.[219]


Table 8:The U.S. Chemical Weapons Stockpile: July 1958

Munition

Sarin (GB)

Mustard Gas (HD)

Shells, 105mm howitzer

928,000

1,152,000

Shells, 155mm howitzer

92,000

306,000

Shells, 4.2-inch mortar

655,000

 

M34A1 1000-lb. cluster bombs

24,000

-

100-lb. Bombs

-

72,000

Bulk agent

12,000 tons

14,000 tons

SOURCE: U.S. Army, Memorandum, Review of Bacteriological and Chemical Warfare Planning, July 9, 1958, Appendix I Toxic Chemical Warfare, Top Secret, NARA.


VX

But the research scientists at the U.S. Army Chemical Corps devised a new “wonder weapon” that would, at least temporarily, reinvigorate interest in chemical weapons inside the U.S. government. In 1954, the scientists at the U.S. Army Chemical Corps CW laboratory at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland had discovered a new and extremely lethal nerve agent, which they designated VX. With the consistency of lubricating oil and extremely persistent, VX was a thousand times more toxic than sarin gas. Just a drop of VX on the skin would kill a person in less than fifteen minutes, which meant that just wearing a gas mask would no longer protect you from this new nerve agent.[220]

By the summer of 1956, the Army had succeeded in developing a form of the VX nerve agent that could be produced in mass quantities and put in virtually every form of weapon system imaginable. The problem was that once the VX agent was put into a weapon, it almost immediately began to decompose and lose its toxicity. This required another year of work by the Army scientists before they could stabilize the agent. Field testing of the VX agent began in secret at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah in April 1957, with the tests quickly demonstrating that even minute quantities of VX could kill thousands of people and animals in a matter of minutes. On December 12, 1957, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps declared the VX nerve agent ready for production. The only problem was that they now had to get permission and money from the Department of Defense before putting VX weapons into production.[221]

Following nearly two years of unrelenting pressure from the U.S. Army, on April 27, 1958, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles finally approved the U.S. Army Chemical Corp's plan to produce VX nerve gas weapons.[222] In June 1959, the Army Chemical Corps issued a 8 million dollar contract to build a new chemical weapons plant on the grounds of the Wabash River Ordnance Works in Newport, Indiana to manufacture VX and fill weapons with the agent. The plant was scheduled to go online in July 1961.[223] The U.S. Army Chemical Corps immediately began building a separate plant at Newport to fill the following munitions with VX nerve agent: 155mm artillery shell filled with 6 lbs. of VX; an 8-inch artillery shell filled with 12 lbs. of VX; the E5 landmine holding 12 lbs. of VX; the T238 rocket; the HONEST JOHN and LITTLE JOHN rockets; the SERGEANT missile; and aircraft spray tanks for the USAF.[224]

But the U.S. Army Chemical Corps wanted more. On June 27, 1960, a panel (the Defense Biological and Chemical Planning Board) chaired by Dr. Herbert F. York, which was comprised almost entirely of partisans of greater emphasis on chemical and biological warfare, submitted its report to the Secretary of Defense. Not surprising, the York Board's report recommended redoubling the U.S. military's chemical and biological weapons efforts with more money and a mission to develop newer and even more lethal CW and BW agents. The Secretary of Defense approved the recommendations of the York Board on August 12, 1960 without any dissent.[225]

But by this time the Eisenhower administration was on its last legs, and in November 1960 the American people chose a Democrat, John F. Kennedy, to be the next president of the United States. The Chemical Corps was forced to play a wait-and-see game until such time as the administration decided what it wanted to do about the nation's chemical and biological weapons programs.[226]

The Kennedy Administration Ramps Up the CW Effort

When John F. Kennedy became the President of the United States on January 20, 1961, he appointed hard-charging auto executive Robert S. McNamara to head the Defense Department. With the full blessing of the JCS (and the Army Chemical Corps), on October 4, 1961 the Pentagon approved a plan to immediately expand and modernize the U.S. chemical and biological weapons programs. This program was given the codename “Project 112.”[227]

With hundreds of millions of dollars of new money from the Pentagon (the budget of the Army Chemical Corps tripled between 1961 and 1964), the Army Chemical Corps ordered that their dormant chemical weapons production lines be reopened and dramatically expanded in order to produce yet another series of new nerve gas weapons, the most lethal of which was the nerve agent VX. The new VX complex at Newport, Indiana began production in April 1961, and reached full production capacity in August 1961. By October 1961, the Newport plant was cranking out thousands of chemical munitions filled with the deadly VX nerve agent.[228]

Robert McNamara's call to arms revitalized the U.S. chemical weapons program. Between January 1961 and the end of July 1962, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps produced 575 tons of VX nerve agent, which went into 5,951 M23 landmines each filled with 2-gallons of VX; 274 M121A1 155mm artillery shells filled with VX nerve agent; 68,994 M55 115mm rocket warheads filled with sarin gas; and 53,242 M55 115mm rocket warheads filled with VX nerve agent.[229]

By the end of the Kennedy administration in 1963, the U.S. chemical weapons program had reached its peak. Lethal chemical warheads were being developed or manufactured for virtually every weapon system in the U.S. military, from landmines and artillery shells to ballistic and cruise missiles. More than forty different chemical weapons systems were reportedly developed during the late 1950s and early 1960s.[230]

But the Chemical Corps comeback was short-lived. Interest in chemical and biological weapons began to notably diminish towards the end of the Kennedy administration in 1963, leading to dramatic cuts in funding for these programs. Weapons testing and production work declined even more precipitously after the U.S. entered the Vietnam War in 1965.

The 1969 Suspension of the U.S. Chemical Weapons Program by Richard Nixon

Ironically, one can blame blowback resulting from the growing unpopularity of the Vietnam War in Congress for the demise of the American chemical weapons program in 1969.

President Richard Nixon entered the White House on January 20, 1969, determined to try to salvage something from the deteriorating security situation in Vietnam. On April 30, 1969, Nixon's new Secretary of Defense, former congressman Melvin R. Laird, launched a comprehensive review of all U.S. government biological and chemical weapons policies and programs, whose goal was to take a long and critical look at U.S. chemical and biological weapons policy in the context of American national security requirements. The study was supposed to recommend possible minor changes in U.S. chemical and biological warfare policy, but it turned out that unforeseen circumstances took a hand which forced a complete reorientation of the study.[231]

The first of these circumstances was the public disclosure that the U.S. Army had been for decades dumping unwanted chemical weapons into the North Atlantic without disclosing these activities to Congress or anybody else for that matter. This disclosure, naturally, set off a firestorm of negative publicity not only in the U.S., but also in Europe and at the United Nations.[232]

The second came just a few weeks later, when the Wall Street Journal on July 18, 1969, reported that a chemical weapons accident had occurred ten days earlier on July 8, 1969 at the Chibana Ammunition Depot on Okinawa. A leak in a 500-pound chemical bomb injured 24 U.S. military personnel and civilians. The accident put the U.S. Army in an embarrassing predicament since it had tried to cover up the incident so as not to infuriate the Japanese government, which was in the process of negotiating the return of Okinawa to Japanese control from the U.S. government. Not surprisingly, the Japanese government, which knew nothing about the presence of chemical weapons on Okinawa, reacted with outrage and demanded that the U.S. government remove the weapons immediately.[233]

Then in August 1969, the U.S. Congress stepped in and unilaterally initiated a moratorium on the production of new chemical weapons, cutting off all funding for any further research, development, testing or production of chemical weapons. Almost overnight, the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile had become a massive embarrassment and a liability for the U.S. government.

The question then became: what should the U.S. government do with its vast but aging chemical weapons stockpile? At the time, the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile consisted of approximately 35,000 agent tons of bulk and filled chemical munitions. According to declassified documents in this collection, 50.6 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile consisted of weapons or bulk storage containers filled with distilled mustard gas (HD); 35.6 percent of the stockpile consisted of weapons and bulk storage contained filled with sarin (GB) nerve gas; and the rest of the stockpile (13.8 percent) consisted of munitions and storage containers filled with the nerve agent VX. A one to two week operational supply of 1,585 agent tons of chemical munitions was stored on Okinawa but scheduled to be moved to Guam, and a five-day operational supply of chemical munitions (488 agent tons) was stored at Clausen in West Germany.[234]

The Nixon's administration's solution to its conundrum was to issue a statement on November 25, 1969, that reaffirmed the U.S. government's commitment to not be the first nation to use chemical weapons, and committed the U.S. government to submitting the 1925 Geneva Convention Protocol to the U.S. Senate for ratification, which would commit the United States not to use chemical weapons. President Nixon also announced the immediate suspension of all work on developing or producing new chemical weapons, as well as the discontinuance of the American biological weapons program. The Pentagon objected violently to this action, but they were overruled by President Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.[235]


Table 9: The U.S. Chemical Weapons Stockpile: 1970

Filled Munitions Stockpile (Agent Tons)

Agent

CONUS

Okinawa

Germany

Total

HD/HT

3428

228

0

3656 (11%)

GB

4243

987

314

5544 (17%)

VX

2453

214

174

2841 (9%)

TOTAL

10124 (31%)

1429 (4%)

488 (2%)

12041 (37%)

 

 

 

 

 

Bulk Agent Stockpile (Agent Tons)

Agent

CONUS

Okinawa

Germany

Total

HD/HT

12743

59

0

12802 (39%)

GB

6311

47

0

6358 (19%)

VX

1753

50

0

1803 (5%)

TOTAL

20807 (63%)

156 (½%)

0 (0%)

20963 (63%)

SOURCE: NSC, Interdepartmental Political-Military Group, Report, Annual Review of United States Chemical Warfare and Biological Research Programs as of 1 November 1970, November 1, 1970, Secret, p. 8, State Department FOIA


Ronald Reagan Revives the U.S. Chemical Weapons Program

Despite President Nixon's halt of the U.S. chemical weapons program in 1969, the White House did not order the weapons already in the American stockpile destroyed, nor did the Nixon administration block future modernization of the stockpile with new weapons.

This left the door open for the U.S. Army's Chemical Corps, which immediately began lobbying for permission to begin developing a new generation of chemical weapons that would be safer to store, easier to use, and more lethal than the weapons that were then in existence. The Army and its backers in the Pentagon argued that the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile was obsolete and unusable, and that the U.S. needed a credible chemical weapons stockpile in order to deter Soviet aggression. It was an old and not very original argument, but it appealed to the generals in the JCS and the elderly conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill who dominated the congressional committees dealing with national security matters.

Thus began an epic (and virtually unknown) fifteen year battle inside the Washington bureaucracy over whether or not to build a new generation of binary chemical weapons. Throughout the Nixon and Ford administrations (1969-1977), the Pentagon kept inserting requests for money into its annual budget for developing new binary chemical munitions and for building a new plant at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to build the weapons. And every year, Congress, which was dominated by the Democratic Party, kept rejecting the Pentagon's requests. For four years (1977-1981), the Jimmy Carter administration managed to keep the binary chemical weapons issue smothered despite fierce and very public opposition from the Pentagon, which increasingly felt that these weapons had to be built in order to maintain a credible retaliatory capability on the European battlefield.[236]

According to a November 30, 1978 NSC report, “The U.S. [chemical weapons] stockpile suffers from two major deficiencies: the number and type of munitions, and their location. The U.S. has about 30,500 agent tons of which only 7,200 tons are usable. Over the next seven years, the 7,200 tons will be reduced gradually to 2,400 tons because of obsolescence and deterioration. Of the 7,200 tons, roughly 450 tons are stored at one site in Germany. The deployment of additional chemical munitions to forward positions in Europe has not been possible because our Allies remain quite negative on this issue. Importantly, Defense has not established a requirement for a chemical weapons stockpile of a specific size. Since there is no overall concept of how chemical weapons would be employed, it is not possible to estimate consumption rates and, thus, a requirement. JCS has established a figure of 30,000 agent tons but it has not been validated in DOD. The politics within the Pentagon on the CW issue are significant. There are sharp differences between OSD and JCS. The Army Chemical Corps supported by the JCS is fighting for its very existence, and has been fanatic in its push for substantial improvement in the U.S. stockpile.[237]

In 1985 President Reagan sided with the JCS and the Army Chemical Corps, officially reversing the 1969 Nixon moratorium on chemical weapons development. A few months later Congress approved his request to begin production of binary VX and sarin. At the same time, due to mounting concerns about the dangers posed by the rapidly aging chemical weapons stockpile, the Reagan administration ordered many of the older chemical weapons be destroyed.[238]

On October 16, 1987, Reagan notified Congress that he had authorized the initiation of production of the new M687 155mm binary chemical artillery shell.[239] The U. S. produced a reported 69 tons of sarin and VX-filled M687 binary 155mm artillery shells before halting production of these weapons in 1990.[240]

In addition, the Reagan administration approved the development and production of a number of other binary chemical weapons systems. However, these development programs were all unmitigated failures. The 500-lb. BIGEYE chemical bomb, which had been under development since the mid-1960s, never passed a single operational reliability drop test at the Dugway Proving Ground and was cancelled. U.S. Army efforts to binary chemical warheads for the U.S. Multiple‑Launch Rocket System (MLRS) were also unsuccessful, and this project was cancelled in 1990.[241]

U.S. Chemical Weapons Production and Testing Facilities

Between 1945 and 1990, the vast majority of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile consisted of the following different types of lethal gases or nerve agents:[242]

  • choking agents, such as phosgene gas (CG);
  • nerve agents, such as sarin (GB) and VX;
  • blood agents, including hydrogen cyanide (AC) and cyanogen chloride (CK);
  • blistering agents, such as mustard (H), distilled mustard (HD), nitrogen mustard (HN) and Lewisite (L).

Between 1950 and 1969, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps built hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons, including aerial bombs, cluster bomblets, spray tanks, artillery shells, mortar shells, rocket warheads and even toxic landmines, using the agents listed above. A number of documents in this collection provide the technical details of all the different kinds of chemical munitions built by the Army during this twenty year timeframe, all but a few of which have been destroyed over the past twenty years.[243]

Given the large size of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, it is perhaps surprising that all these munitions were produced at a very small number of plants located in rural areas. The following are brief profiles of the plants that produced America's chemical weapons stockpile from 1945 until the 1980s.[244]

Edgewood Arsenal

The Edgewood Arsenal, now part of the Aberdeen Proving Ground, is situated on 38,942-acres of land approximately twenty-five miles northeast of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and seventy miles northeast of Washington, D.C. Erected in November 1917 shortly after America's entry into World War I, the Edgewood Arsenal was America's first chemical weapons manufacturing complex. Weapons production began in June 1918, and by the time the war ended in November 1918, the Edgewood Arsenal was busy manufacturing hundreds of chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas weapons every day. When the Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918, production of chemical weapons at Edgewood stopped and the manufacturing plants were put on standby status.

Completed in 1942, the Pilot Plant Complex at the Edgewood Arsenal originally produced chemically-coated uniforms to protect soldiers from exposure to mustard gas. Production of chemical weapons followed, with the Edgewood pilot plant producing huge numbers of mustard gas bombs and artillery shells throughout World War II until this work ceased at the end of World War II. In 1950, a separate pilot production plant was built at the Edgewood Arsenal to produce the first chemical weapons filled with the nerve agent sarin (GB). This pilot plant served as the model for the two sarin production plants that the Army Chemical Corps built at Muscle Shoals, Alabama and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado. Research and development activities on chemical agents and binary chemical weapons continued until the plant's closure in 1986.

The entire Edgewood Arsenal chemical weapons manufacturing complex has been completely demolished over the past twenty years. The complex consisted of a main structure and eight support buildings. Workers demolished six of the support buildings in 1998, completing destruction in December 1999. One additional building, the Mustard Distillation and Fill Facility, was demolished in 2006.[245]

Newport Chemical Depot

The 6,990-acre Newport Chemical Depot outside the tiny town of Dana in rural western Indiana, housed the plant that produced the entire U.S. stockpile of the deadly nerve agent known as VX. Construction of the plant began in 1959 and was largely completed in the spring of 1961. Between April 1961 and June 1968, the Newport plant produced approximately 4,500 tons of VX before being placed in standby status in September 1968. The plant continued to fill a variety of munitions with VX nerve agents until the fall of 1969 when President Nixon closed down the U.S. chemical weapons program.[246]

A two-phased demolition project of the VX production facilities at Newport began in 1998 and was completed on April 22, 2006. The final treaty inspection report certifying that the plant had been demilitarized was signed on July 20, 2006.

Pine Bluff Arsenal

The Pine Bluff Arsenal once housed two chemical weapons production facilities. Destroyed in 1999, the BZ Fill Facility filled munitions with the agent BZ, a hallucinogen similar to LSD. The Integrated Binary Production Facilities (IBPF), built in the 1970s and 1980s, once produced DF, a GB agent precursor chemical and the M20 canister, a binary chemical munition that was deployed in small amounts in the 1980s. Demolition began in October 2003, and destruction of all these facilities was completed in December 2006. [247]

Rocky Mountain Arsenal

Construction of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal (RMA) was begun in June 1942 outside the town of Commerce City north of Denver, Colorado. Its mission was to manufacture and fill an array of chemical weapons and incendiary devices for use in World War II. Built on a crash basis by thousands of workers, the plant began producing chemical weapons in December 1942. During World War II, the RMA's three thousand workers produced a staggering 87,000 tons of toxic chemical weapons, principally chlorine, mustard and Lewisite gas bombs and artillery shells.

The Korean War led to a massive expansion of the plant. Between 1951 and 1953, a modern production complex was built at the RMA to manufacture and fill sarin (GB) nerve gas weapons. Construction of the new sarin production complex was completed on May 1, 1953, and sarin-filled weapons began being produced almost immediately afterwards. RMA was America's only sarin weapons plant throughout the Cold War, producing tens of thousands of GB-filled bombs, spray tanks, artillery shells, rocket warheads and other weapons systems. In Fiscal Year 1955 alone, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal produced a staggering 898,600 gallons of sarin nerve agent, which was used to fill 24,000 M34 and M34A1 chemical cluster bombs for the U.S. Air Force and 14,000 155mm artillery shells for the U.S. Army. Production of sarin agent ceased on August 16, 1957, but the plant continued filling weapons with the nerve agent until April 1958 when the sarin filling line was also closed down.[248]

Finally, from 1959 to 1962, a separate facility at RMA produced biological weapons, principally bombs filled with the TX anti-crop agent that caused Wheat Rust. The plant ceased producing chemical and biological weapons in 1969 after President Nixon closed down these programs.[249]

This operation was completed independent of NSCMP. RMA demolished the DC Production Facility in 1995; the Mustard (HD) Fill Facility in 2002; the HD Distillation Facility in 2001; and the GB (sarin) Production and Fill Facility in 2003. GB is the non-persistent nerve agent sarin, while DC, a precursor chemical, was used to make sarin. Mustard (HD) is a blister agent produced in the United States until the 1940s.

Dugway Proving Ground

Located on 801,505 square-miles of arid desert and scrub land about 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, since 1942 the Dugway Proving Ground has served as the U.S. Army's principal chemical and biological weapons test center and proving ground. Testing of chemical weapons began at Dugway in the summer of 1942, followed by the first tests of biological weapons in November 1943 on a separate section of the base called the Granite Mountain facility.

At the height of the Cold War, the Dugway Proving Ground was probably the most dangerous place in America. Between 1946 and 1986, press reports indicate more than 1,100 open-air chemical weapons tests were conducted at the Dugway Proving Ground, as well as 328 biological weapons tests and 74 experiments involving highly-lethal radioactive weapons, i.e. ‘Dirty bombs' that killed by emitting massive amounts of radioactivity.[250]

The open-air testing of chemical and biological weapons at the Dugway Proving Ground ceased decades ago, but two large laboratories located in the center of the base continue to test protective equipment and military material using live chemical and biological agents.[251] Perhaps more importantly, large portions of the facility remain a toxic wasteland littered with the remains of hundreds of chemical and biological munitions leftover from the Cold War and the residue of the lethal agents and/or pathogens they contained.[252]

Chemical Weapons Storage Sites in the U.S.

The number of U.S. Army munitions storage sites inside the U.S. holding America's chemical weapons stockpile was deliberately kept small and very discrete. At the time the Korean War began in June 1950, the entire American chemical weapons stockpile, consisting mostly of mustard gas, was stored at four U.S. Army-run chemical depots in the U.S: the Deseret Chemical Depot at Tooele, Utah; the Eastern Chemical Depot at the Edgewood Arsenal in Aberdeen, Maryland; the Midwest Chemical Depot at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Pine Bluff, Arkansas; and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Commerce City, Colorado.[253]

In the early to mid-1960s, as the army's stockpile of new VX nerve gas weapons began to grow, the U.S. Army moved a portion of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile to four new ammunition depots: the Anniston Army Depot in Anniston, Alabama; the Lexington-Bluegrass Army Depot in Richmond, Kentucky; the Newport Army Ammunition Plant in Dana, Indiana; and the Umatilla Depot Activity in Hermiston, Oregon.

As of 1990, the 35,000 tons of chemical agents comprising the CW stockpile were being stored at eight special munitions storage depots in the U.S. and one remote island in the South Pacific:[254]

  • Anniston Army Depot (Anniston, Alabama): Opened in 1940 as an ordnance storage depot for conventional weapons, the first chemical weapons began arriving at the Anniston Army depot in 1963. In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 2,253.63 tons of chemical agents (HT: 532.30; HD: 456.08; GB: 436.61; VX: 828.74) in 661,000 weapons comprising 7.36percent of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile. All chemical weapons stored at Anniston were destroyed by September 2011.[255]
  • Edgewood Area/Aberdeen Proving Ground (Edgewood, Maryland): In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 1,624.87 tons of mustard gas (HD) agent in bulk containers and 1.30 tons of binary munitions comprising 5.31 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile.
  • Lexington‑Blue Grass Army Depot (Richmond, Kentucky): The 14,600 acre Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot held the smallest amount of chemical weapons of the Army's eight chemical weapons depots. Mustard gas-filled chemical weapons had been stored at Lexington-Blue Grass since 1944, with shipments of more modern sarin and VX-filled weapons arriving in the mid‑1960s. In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 523.41 tons of chemical agents (HD: 90.63; GB: 305.64; VX: 127.15) in 101,000 weapons comprising only 1.71 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile. Today, according to the U.S. Army, 523 tons of nerve agents GB and VX, and mustard agent in projectiles, warheads and rockets are still stored at the depot waiting to be destroyed.
  • Newport Army Ammunition Plant (Newport, Indiana): In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 1,269.33 tons of VX in bulk containers comprising 4.15 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile.
  • Pine Bluff Arsenal (Pine Bluff, Arkansas): In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 3,849.71 tons of chemical agents (HT: 3,124.55; HD: 94.20; GB: 483.69; VX: 147.27) in 123,000 weapons and bulk containers comprising 12.58 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile and 174.72 tons of binary agent munitions.
  • Pueblo Depot Activity (Pueblo, Colorado): The construction of the Pueblo Ordnance Depot (POD) began in February 1942 on 23,000 acres of arid land in western Colorado; by August, the depot was fully operational. In 1952, the first mustard agent filled munitions were shipped for storage at the depot. In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 2,611.05 tons of HT/HD mustard gas agents in 780,000 weapons comprising 8.53 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile. According to the U.S. Army, today 2,611 tons of mustard agent-filled weapons remain at the Pueblo Depot still waiting to be destroyed.
  • Tooele Army Depot (Tooele, Utah): Construction beginning in July 1942, the Tooele Army Depot (formerly the Deseret Chemical Depot) is located near the town of Tooele, Utah (sixty miles southwest of Salt Lake City) on 24,732 acres of desert scrub land. Chemical weapons storage operations commenced on July 11, 1943 in 141 munitions storage igloos built especially to store chemical munitions. Since 1943 Tooele has been the largest chemical weapons storage site in America and remains so to this day, despite the gradual destruction of many of the weapons formerly stored at the site since the end of the Cold War. In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 13,616.00 tons of chemical/nerve agent (HD: 5,694.64, GB: 6,045.26, VX: 1,356.33) in 1.1 million weapons and bulk containers, comprising 44.5 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile and 33.58 tons of binary agent munitions.[256]
  • Umatilla Depot Activity (Hermiston, Oregon): Located on more than 19,700 acres in rural northeastern Oregon, the Umatilla Depot was opened in 1941 to store conventional ammunition. The Umatilla Depot began storing chemical weapons in 1962. In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 3,717.38 tons of chemical agents (HD: 2,339.52 tons; GB: 1,014.01 tons; and VX: 363.86 tons) in 220,000 weapons and containers comprising 12.15 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile and 470.59 tons of binary agent munitions.[257]
  • Johnston Atoll (16-44N 169-31W): Johnston Atoll is located 717 miles southwest of Hawaii. In January 1996, the following was a summary of the chemical weapons stored at this depot: 1,134.17 tons of nerve and mustard agents (HD: 164.86: GB: 617.48; VX: 351.83) in 292,000 weapons comprising 3.71 percent of the stockpile. The last chemical weapons stored on Johnston Island were destroyed in November 2000.

The Deployment of U.S. Chemical Weapons to Europe and Asia

Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. government and military exercised extreme caution about deploying even a small portion of its chemical weapons stockpile to Western Europe and the Far East. The subject was deemed to be so sensitive that all information about the presence of American chemical weapons outside the continental U.S. was given a Top Secret classification, and the number of officials with access to this information was deliberately held to a bare minimum.

The first known instance of the U.S. military's interest in deploying chemical weapons overseas came in the midst of the Korean War, when on January 6, 1951, the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, Lt. General Matthew B. Ridgway, asked his boss in Tokyo, General Douglas MacArthur, for permission to use chemical weapons against the attacking Chinese and North Korean forces as a last resort measure in order to cover the potential withdrawal and evacuation of U.S. forces from Korea to Japan. Ridgway's request was denied (no chemical weapons were deployed in the Far East), but the fact that he made the request was indicative of how grave the military situation in Korea was at the time.[258]

It was not until 1954, a year after the end of the Korean War, that the Pentagon began giving serious thought to deploying chemical weapons to Western Europe in order to help U.S. and NATO forces resist in wartime the much larger Soviet and Warsaw Pact military forces aligned against them on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Pentagon had wanted to send chemical weapons to Europe as early as 1952, but the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile was deemed to be so poor that the JCS decided to wait until the first sarin (GB) nerve gas weapons were slated to begin coming off the production line in 1954-1955. The Pentagon initially wanted to deploy a small portion of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile to Great Britain, but apparently diplomatic considerations dictated that these weapons be deployed to West Germany instead.[259] As of 1956, the USAF was planning to store more than 57,0000 chemical bombs filled with phosgene (CG) and cyanogen chloride (CK) gas at the Chize ammunition depot southwest of Paris, France, but apparently this plan also came to naught.[260]

After several more years of debate, in early 1959 the U.S. Army secretly deployed what was described as a “token [chemical weapons] retaliatory capability” to West Germany without the formal consent of the German government, although German chancellor Konrad Adenauer was secretly briefed in August 1958 about the U.S. Army's plans. Adenauer apparently did not object to the U.S. military's plans to store chemical weapons on German soil. The 3,900 tons of mustard gas and sarin nerve gas weapons that were shipped to Germany were stored at the Seventh Army Chemical Depot, located on the grounds of the Rhine Ordnance Depot in Kircheimbolanden.[261]

The Pentagon and the U.S. Army continued to push for permission to ship more modern and lethal nerve gas weapons to Germany to replace the older mustard gas weapons that had been sent to the continent in 1959. As usual, they got what they wanted. On June 14, 1967, a U.S. Navy merchant ship sailed from the Sunny Point Naval Pier in North Carolina for a port in Germany, carrying in its hold a shipment of 155mm projectiles filled with GB and VX nerve gas. All other details about this deployment operation remain classified, such as the number of munitions shipped, the ultimate destination of the munitions, the German port that the ship docked at, and the identification of the ship(s) used to transport the chemical munitions. All of the weapons were deployed to NATO Site 59 outside the town of Clausen in West Germany, where the U.S. Army custodial unit was the 636th Ordnance Company (EOD).[262] The addition of these new weapons brought the size of the chemical weapons stockpile in Germany to 488 metric tons, which was far less than what the U.S. Army thought it needed.[263]

The presence of these chemical weapons in Germany, many of which were dangerous to store, quickly became a liability for the U.S. Army. As of June 1971, the Army was storing almost 115,000 155mm and 8-inch artillery shells filled with sarin (GB) and VX nerve agents in West Germany. The weapons were stored at a heavily guarded special weapons depot called Site 59, which was located on a treeless hilltop four kilometers east of the German village of Clausen, not far from the border with France. These nerve gas-filled artillery shells were stacked floor-to-ceiling on pallets (each containing eight artillery shells) inside fifteen huge earth-covered storage bunkers, which comes to about 7,600 artillery shells housed in each bunker. The bunkers were located within a heavily guarded exclusion area that was surrounded by a double barbed wire fence and guarded by a company of over a hundred U.S. Army MPs, who had orders to shoot-to-kill anyone who tried to enter the site without authorization. In the spring of 1971, the Army technicians at Site 59 discovered that 11,134 of the sarin-filled 155mm artillery shells stored at the site were no longer useable (the Army used the oblique phrase “operationally defective” to describe the condition of the weapons) and were in such poor physical condition that they constituted a danger of leaking. The Army quickly decided that these weapons had to be removed from Germany as quickly and as quietly as possible. Later that month, all of the defective weapons were hastily packed up and shipped in February 1972 to Johnston Island in the South Pacific for destruction.[264]

The remaining four hundred tons of nerve gas weapons (102,000 chemical-filled 155mm and 8-inch artillery shells) were secretly shipped out of Germany beginning in July 1990 when it became abundantly clear that they were no longer needed due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. All of the weapons were removed from Germany by the end of 1990, and the Army's Clausen chemical weapons depot in Germany was formally closed on February 15, 1991.[265]

The deployment of chemical weapons to Asia followed pretty much the same pattern as the Army's chemical weapons activities in Europe. As was the case in Europe, the inherent danger posed by these weapons proved to be their undoing.

The first formal planning for the deployment of chemical weapons to the Far East began in March 1952, when the USAF began trying to figure out how many chemical weapons and what types of weapons could be used in East Asia in case of all-out war with the USSR and/or China. The U.S. Army followed soon thereafter, formally proposing to ship several thousand tons of chemical weapons to Japan in May 1952 because of the precarious military situation in Korea.[266] In the months that followed, the Pentagon bureaucracy went back and forth on the question whether to deploy these weapons to Japan, and if so, what types of weapons should be sent. In October 1952, the Pentagon suspended further planning because the Pentagon suddenly developed a case of “cold feet” about the potential diplomatic ramifications if the Japanese government ever got wind of the deployment of chemical weapons to Japan.[267]

The end of the Korean War in July 1953 ended the need to deploy chemical weapons to Japan, at least temporarily. After what must have seemed an interminable number of years of debate about the efficacy of deploying these weapons to Japan inside the Pentagon, the Defense Department, the Army and the Far East Command (FECOM) in Tokyo finally concluded that deploying chemical weapons to Japan was out of the question, because they just could not find a way to inform the Japanese government about this move without generating enormous controversy in Tokyo. The decision was made to deploy the weapons to Okinawa instead. Okinawa was then not a part of Japan, but rather a trust territory controlled by the U.S. government. This decision relieved Washington of the responsibility of telling the Japanese government anything about this move. In 1955, bureaucratic inertia took over, and the Pentagon for reasons unknown chose not to authorize the deployment of chemical weapons to Okinawa until 1961.[268]

In January 1961, the JCS authorized U.S. Pacific Command (CINCPAC) to deploy up to 16,000 tons of mustard gas and sarin and VX nerve gas weapons to Okinawa, but no one thought to inform the Japanese government because the United States controlled the island. In December 1962, a specially trained U.S. Army Chemical Corps unit, the 267th Chemical Platoon (Service) was deployed to Okinawa to prepare and operate the facilities on the island for the storage and maintenance of the chemical weapons.[269]

Between April 1963 and May 1965, the U.S. Army sent three large shipments of chemical weapons packed into the holds of U.S. government-owned merchant ships from the Concord Naval Weapons Station in California to Okinawa. The weapons consisted of chemical artillery shells, rockets, mines and bulk containers filled with sarin (GB), VX persistent nerve agent and distilled mustard gas (HD) chemical agents. By the end of 1965 a total of 11,000 tons of mustard gas and nerve agents were shipped to Okinawa; by the end of 1963 all 11,000 tons of these chemical weapons were tucked inside storage bunkers at the Chibana Army Ammunition Depot near the air approach to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.[270]

The presence of these chemical weapons on Okinawa did not last very long. As noted above, on July 8, 1969, a 500-lb. sarin-filled bomb leaked during a routine cleaning of the weapons at the Chibana Ammo Depot on Okinawa, injuring 24 U.S. personnel, none of them seriously. Press reports prompted protests and the Japanese government demanded that the weapons be removed immediately. Within a week it was announced that the chemical weapons would be removed. It took some time, but all of these weapons were transferred to Johnston Island in the south Pacific by the end of September 1971, where they sat in storage bunkers for decades until they were finally destroyed by incineration.[271]

The Security and Safety of the U.S. Chemical Weapons Stockpile

At least one terrible accident involving chemical weapons occurred during World War II. On the night of December 2, 1943, a force of a hundred German JU-88 bombers attacked the port of Bari in southern Italy, sinking sixteen American ships – among them the SS John Harvey, which was carrying two thousand M47A1 hundred‑pound mustard gas bombs.

The presence of the chemical weapons on the ship was highly classified, and the port authorities ashore had no knowledge of it. The number of fatalities was higher than necessary as a result, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, applied the wrong treatment.

According to the official U.S. military account of the incident, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen,” out of 628 mustard gas military casualties. Civilian casualties were not recorded but were estimated at over a thousand men and women. The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war.[272] According to another U.S. Army report, 83 people were killed in the Bari incident and another 534 people (most of whom were civilians) were badly injured in the harbor area from ingesting mustard gas.[273]

In March 1968, over 6,300 sheep were killed just outside the Dugway Proving Ground when a test of VX nerve gas went horribly awry and winds blew the nerve gas onto neighboring sheep ranches in an area known as Skull Valley. This incident became known as the Skull Valley sheep kill, and generated enormous public outrage in Utah.[274]

On July 8, 1969, during a routine cleaning of chemical artillery shells stored at the Chibana Ammunition Depot on Okinawa, a sarin leak occurred in a 500-pound bomb, injuring 24 U.S. personnel. This incident has been described in more detail above.[275]

The U.S. Biological Warfare Program

The origins of the U.S. government's biological weapons program can be traced back to America's entry into World War II, when the U.S. Army began a secret program to develop and produce a range of biological weapons in the belief that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were developing their own arsenal of biological weapons.[276]

In November 1942, the U.S. Army's Chemical Warfare Service was asked to take control of all of the U.S. government's secret biological warfare work, including the construction of research laboratories, test ranges, and pilot production plants to design, test and produce these weapons. In April 1943 a small U.S. Army National Guard airfield at Fort Detrick outside the town of Frederick, Maryland was chosen to be the home of the U.S. Army's nascent biological warfare program. The Army rapidly built a series of state-of-the-art research laboratories and support facilities at Fort Detrick to develop America's first biological warfare weapons. By the summer of 1944 the Army had opened a secret BW testing facility at Horn Island, Mississippi and a small BW pilot production plant six miles south of Terre Haute, Indiana, called the Vigo Ordnance Plant.[277]

Despite all the time, money and effort the Army invested in biological weapons during World War II, it actually produced very little in the way of tangible results. In June 1945, production of the anthrax simulant Bacillus globigii, was started at the Vigo Plant. This operation was still in progress and a test batch of eight thousand pounds of the anthrax agent had just been produced in a single production run when the end of the war brought orders from Washington to immediately suspend further activities. By that time the first shipments of four-pound Mark I BW bombs were arriving from Electromaster, Inc. in Detroit. They were stored pending postwar operations.[278]

No actual anthrax biological weapons were ever produced at the Vigo plant because of safety concerns, but the plant did produce eight thousand pounds of an anthrax simulant for training purposes. After the end of World War II the Vigo BW plant was closed down and the facility leased to the Pfizer pharmaceutical company for the manufacture of a new line of drugs.

The end of World War II almost led to the termination of the U.S. Army biological weapons program. At the time of Germany's surrender in May 1945, the U.S. Army general staff wanted to close down all BW research, development and production activities. The Army's Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) appealed the decision, begging the Secretary of War to allow them to continue some minimal peace-time research activities in order to keep the BW program alive. The Secretary of War relented and on September 13, 1945 allowed the CWS to keep open the Camp Detrick research facility. The BW weapons plant at Vigo, Indiana, was also kept open, but only in standby status.[279] The CWS weapons testing facility at Horn Island was deactivated on November 18, 1945, and the Granite Peak, Utah BW test range was closed in October 1945; its mission was transferred to the neighboring Dugway Proving Ground.[280]

For the next five years (1945-1950), the U.S. Army's biological weapons program remained in stasis, with very little work being done on developing or producing biologic agents or weapons. In January 1946, a short but informative unclassified report, the so-called Merck Report, was produced, detailing the U.S. Army's work on biological weapons during World War II. When the Pentagon realized what it revealed to the public, it reclassified the report as Top Secret. U.S. Army security agents were sent racing around Washington, D.C., ordering reporters and academics to return their copies of the report or face possible prosecution for being in possession of classified information.[281]

The beginning of the Korean War in June 1950 prompted the U.S. Army to revive its dormant BW program. Following an intense lobbying campaign by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and its supporters in the Pentagon, academia and private industry, in October 1950 Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall approved the immediate expansion and intensification of the U.S. Army's BW program, based largely on the military's perception of the Soviet threat, as well as the belief that the North Korean and Chinese would use biological weapons if and when they could.

The Korean War years (1950-1953) were heady times for the U.S. Army's biological warfare scientists and engineers at Fort Detrick, Maryland. With the war raging in Korea and the threat of all-out war with the USSR and China looming, the man who headed the Army's BW research efforts, Dr. Leroy D. Fothergill, pushed his staff to quickly come up with an array of new anti-personnel, anti-animal and anti-crop BW agents that could be used for strategic strikes. Money was no object. Dr. Fothergill's BW research facilities at Fort Detrick were dramatically expanded, and in 1951 construction began on a BW weapons production facility at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in the bucolic climes of rural southeastern Arkansas.[282]

With the massive influx of money from the Pentagon, the two thousand microbiologists and technicians working at the Chemical Corps Biological Laboratories at Fort Detrick quickly developed a number of anti-personnel and anti-crop biologic agents plus the bombs specially designed for SAC bombers to deliver them to targets inside the USSR, the People's Republic of China or even North Korea.[283]

In 1951, the first BW anti-crop bomb filled with a pathogen called TX was produced. The TX pathogen was designed specifically to destroy cereal crops. By the end of September 1951 a new BW bomb called the E73 was ready for production, as well as the M33 BW cluster bomb, which was filled with 86 M114 BW bomblets. Both bombs were hastily developed stop-gap weapons responsive to an urgent requirement levied by the USAF for a BW bomb that SAC B-29 or B-50 bombers could drop on enemy targets.[284]

In 1952, the scientists at Fort Detrick produced a new anti-personnel weapon and a BW weapon designed to destroy plants and crops. In April 1952 the U.S. Army Chemical Corps opened a secret research facility at Fort Terry on Plum Island, located off the tip of Montauk Point on Long Island, New York, to develop an array of pathogens that would kill livestock. Its cover was as a Department of Agriculture research station.[285]

By the end of June 1953 the construction work on the new BW weapons production plant at Pine Bluff, Arkansas (its covername was the “X-201 Plant”) was nearly complete and the facility was ready to begin producing its first weaponry. Pilot production of the U.S. Army's first lethal anti-personnel BW agent started at Pine Bluff in late June 1953. Construction work on six more pilot plants designed to produce research and development batches of new biological weapons were almost complete at Fort Detrick, Maryland by the end of the summer of 1953.[286]

The Pine Bluff Arsenal was established in 1941 on 14,454 acres of unoccupied land to manufacture incendiary grenades and bombs as well as manufacture, load, and store chemical weapons, such as mustard gas and lewisite. PBA was one of four plants run by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps which manufactured chemical weapons during World War II. It became the only U.S. site for the full‑scale production of biological munitions in 1953 and continued this mission until 1969. The arsenal was selected as the sole site for the Binary Chemical Munitions Production Facility in 1978; this program was active until 1990. In the 1980s, PBA served as the primary site for chemical defense equipment recertification. Approximately 12 percent of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile was stored at the Arsenal. The chemical weapon inventory consisted of 3,848 tons of lethal nerve agents, blister agents, and associated munitions.[287]

The highpoint of the U.S. biological weapons program came in 1954. The U.S. Army Chemical Corps had four facilities engaged in the fulltime development, testing and production of biological weapons: the Chemical Corps Biological Laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland; the X-201 BW production plant (renamed the Production Development Laboratories in 1954) at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas; the anti-animal research and testing facility at Fort Terry on Plum Island, New York; and the massive Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where all the BW weapons that were then being developed were tested.[288]

In 1954 the Pine Bluff Arsenal began producing thousands of bombs designed to be filled in wartime with a variety of lethal or incapacitating BW agents. In June 1953, the Pine Bluff Arsenal began pilot plant production of a small half-pound bomb designated the E61; filled with the lethal anthrax virus (B. anthracis), it could kill humans and animals quickly. The anthrax bomb was placed into full-scale production at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in 1954.[289] By the end of 1954 the Pine Bluff Arsenal was producing weaponized delivery systems using a dozen different BW agents, including small batches of the lethal  anti-personnel agents Bacterium tularense, Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis, Brucella melitensis, and Botulinum toxin.[290]

The first Brucella suis BW  anti-personnel bombs were produced in 1954 at the U.S. Army's BW pilot plant at Fort Detrick, Maryland. In August 1958, the Army's Pine Bluff Arsenal produced 47 batches (2,200 gallons per batch) of the lethal  anti-personnel BW agent Bacterium tularense, the microorganism that caused tularemia (rabbit fever or deer-fly fever), leading the Army Chemical Corps to immediately begin building a plant at Pine Bluff to fill E120 bomblets with the agent. Tests at the Dugway Proving Ground proved that a single fighter bomber loaded with these tularense bombs would kill roughly 50 percent of all people in a sixteen square mile area (10,240 acres).[291]

The second half of the 1950s was marked by a lack of activity on biological weapons after the Eisenhower administration slashed the budget for this program in 1955. Progress on developing new agents and BW weapon systems slowed to a crawl, as reflected in the dramatic drop in high-level correspondence within the Pentagon about the biological weapons program. Part of the reason for the slowdown on BW work was that the Defense Department just could not find a way to use biological weapons on the battlefield, no matter how hard they tried. The problem was that biological weapons, by their very nature, were impossible to control. An unanticipated change in wind direction could easily kill tens of thousands of U.S. and allied soldiers, a problem which one did not encounter with nuclear weapons.[292] A critical September 1958 report to the JCS concluded that there simply was no practical way to use biological weapons in wartime against Soviet military forces.[293]

But in the world of weapons development, hope springs eternal, especially in the U.S. political system, where a new president takes office every four years. Starting in the spring of 1962, President Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, ordered an expansion of the U.S. Army's biological weapons program, which had fallen into a rut during the second term of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Upon taking office in January 1961, McNamara ordered an immediate increase in BW agent and munitions production, with production commencing on new BW munitions, including drone dispensers of BW agents, in the spring of 1962.[294]

Judging the overall success or failure of the U.S. biological weapons program is difficult given the relative paucity of declassified documents on the subject. Declassified documents reveal that as of the summer of 1958, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps' biological warfare production facility at the Pine Bluff Arsenal was capable of producing twenty thousand BW bombs per month, which the U.S. Army deemed sufficient to “permit an estimated 1,000 [bombing] sorties with an estimated capability of attacking 50 to 100 targets of 35 square miles each.”[295] What they left unsaid was that the Army Chemical Corps had only one lethal  anti-personnel pathogen (Brucellosis) ready to be loaded into the 18,600 empty BW cluster bombs that were then stockpiled at the Pine Bluff Arsenal.[296]

We do know that during the 26 years from 1954 to the time the U.S. BW program was cancelled by President Nixon in late 1969, the Army's biological weapons laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland and the Pine Bluff BW production plant in Arkansas produced seven different anti-personnel agents, three of which were lethal, and three anti-crop agents, all of which were stockpiled in heavily guarded refrigerated, humidity controlled storage vaults or weapons igloos at Pine Bluff and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and were never used.[297]

The problem appears to be that the size of the U.S. biological weapons stockpile was, on its face, not very impressive despite decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the program. A declassified July 1970 DOD memorandum revealed the complete size and composition of the U.S. biological weapons stockpile shortly after President Nixon ordered the destruction of all biological weapons in the U.S. arsenal. At the time, the only lethal BW agents in the U.S. stockpile were 804 lbs. of tularense (rabbit fever bacteria) and 220 lbs. of anthracis (anthrax bacteria), which if weather conditions were right and if the bombs were properly delivered to their targets, could potentially have killed tens of millions of people and animals.[298]


Table 9: Biological Weapons Agents Produced by the U.S. Army: 1954-1970

Lethal Agents

Incapacitating Agents

 anti-crop Agents

Bacillus anthracis

Brucella suis

Rice blast

Francisella tularensis

Coxiella burnetii

Rye stem rust

Botulinum toxin

Venezuelan equine encephalitis

Wheat stem rust

 

Staphylococcal enterotoxin B

 

SOURCE: U.S. Army, U.S. Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Program: 1942-1977, February 24, 1977, Secret, U.S. Army FOIA


Following President Nixon's 1969 decision to terminate the biological weapons program, the end came quickly and unceremoniously. All lethal and incapacitating anti‑personnel biological weapons stocks were destroyed between May 10, 1971 and May 1, 1972, and the laboratory at Fort Detrick was converted to a civilian-oriented toxicological research laboratory. Included in the BW weapons destroyed in this timeframe were all of the CIA's lethal and incapacitating agents that the Army had secretly made for the Agency's covert action programs. The Pentagon vigorously protested the decision, but was overruled by President Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. All BW anti‑crop agents were destroyed by February 1973, effectively marking the end of the U.S. biological weapons program. The biological weapons production plant at the Pine Bluff Arsenal was razed to the ground, and the Army's BW research laboratories at Fort Detrick were converted into civilian research facilities.[299]

The Toxic Legacy of America's WMD Programs

What we are left with are a series of deeply troubling questions relating to the legacy left by these weapons, which remain to be addressed by future generations of journalists, researchers and scholars.

For example, there is the sobering question of how much damage was done to the environment in the rush to test and build these bombs during the Cold War. Sadly, very little has been written about this subject. In the U.S., researchers are still trying to determine how much damage has been done to the environment by decades of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons testing in the U.S. and in the South Pacific.

The Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas will remain uninhabitable for centuries to come because of the hundreds of nuclear weapons tests conducted there from 1954 to 1992. The same holds true for the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where hundreds of chemical and biological weapons were secretly tested during the Cold War. Then there is the question of how many Americans have died prematurely or contracted various forms of cancer because of their involvement in the manufacturing or testing of these weapons during the Cold War.[300] Furthermore, tens of thousands of chemical weapons were dumped into the North Atlantic by the U.S. Army during the Cold War, and no research is currently being conducted to determine what, if any, effect this has had on local fisheries, coral growth or the maritime environment as a whole.[301]

There is also the human dimension that needs to be considered. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the Pentagon was forced to admit that since the early 1950s it had used human guinea pigs, most of them enlisted military draftees, to test the effects of newly developed chemical and biological weapons on human beings. There has been no interest in this subject by Congress or the U.S. mainstream media since the mid-1990s, so the subject has been largely forgotten. Moreover, many of the key records relating to this secret work by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps remain classified and stored in vaults out in Nevada to keep them away from prying researchers. Sadly, the plight of the thousands of American soldiers and civilians who were exposed to high doses of radiation during nuclear weapons tests also remains untold.[302]

ANNEX 1: Size of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile: 1945-Present

Year

Total Warhead

Warhead Megatonnage

Warhead Builds

Warhead Retirements

Warhead Disassemblies

1945

2

0.04

2

0

 

1946

9

0.18

7

0

 

1947

13

0.26

4

0

 

1948

50

1.25

43

6

 

1949

170

4.19

123

3

 

1950

299

9.53

264

135

 

1951

438

35.25

284

145

 

1952

841

49.95

644

241

 

1953

1169

72.80

345

17

 

1954

1703

339.01

535

1

 

1955

2422

2879.99

806

87

 

1956

3692

9188.65

1379

109

 

1957

5543

17545.86

2232

381

 

1958

7345

17303.54

2619

817

 

1959

12298

19054.62

7088

2135

 

1960

18638

20491.17

7178

838

 

1961

22229

10947.71

5162

1571

 

1962

25,540

12825.02

4529

766

 

1963

28,133

15977.17

3185

830

 

1964

29,463

16943.97

3493

2534

 

1965

31,139

15152.50

3519

1936

 

1966

31,175

14037.46

2429

2357

 

1967

31,255

12786.17

1693

1649

 

1968

29,561

11837.65

536

2194

 

1969

27,552

11714.44

684

3045

 

1970

26,008

9695.20

219

1936

 

1971

25,830

8584.40

1073

1347

 

1972

26,516

8531.51

1546

1541

 

1973

27,835

8452.00

1171

544

 

1974

28,537

8325.22

959

807

 

1975

27,519

7368.38

748

2240

 

1976

25,914

5935.51

427

2181

 

1977

25,542

5845.00

221

998

 

1978

24,418

5721.16

50

1148

 

1979

24,138

5696.34

170

730

 

1980

24,104

5618.86

0

904

732

1981

23,208

5382.91

30

1887

1577

1982

22,886

5358.89

338

1537

1535

1983

23,305

5232.47

217

749

1120

1984

23,459

5192.20

187

1143

994

1985

23,368

5217.48

195

1322

1075

1986

23,317

5414.54

140

1224

1015

1987

23,575

4882.14

0

958

1189

1988

23,205

4789.77

0

1023

581

1989

22,217

4743.34

0

1794

1208

1990

21,392

4518.91

0

1154

 

1991

19,008

3795.94

0

1595

 

1992

13,708

3167.88

0

1856

 

1993

11,511

2647.31

0

1556

 

1994

10,979

2375.30

0

926 (partial)

 

1995

10,904

 

 

 

 

1996

11,011

 

 

 

 

1997

10,903

 

 

 

 

1998

10,732

 

 

 

 

1999

10,685

 

 

 

 

2000

10,577

 

 

 

 

2001

10,526

 

 

 

 

2002

10,457

 

 

 

 

2003

10,027

 

 

 

 

2004

8,570

 

 

 

 

2005

8,360

 

 

 

 

2006

7,853

 

 

 

 

2007

5,709

 

 

 

 

2008

5,273

 

 

 

 

2009

5,113

 

 

 

 

2010

5066

 

 

 

 

2011

4897

 

 

 

 

2012

4881

 

 

 

 

2013

4804

 

 

 

 

2014

4717

 

 

 

 

2015

4571

 

 

 

 

2016

4018

 

 

 

 

Notes

[1].         JCS, Report, Theater Plans for Chemical Warfare, June 4, 1945, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Theater Plans for Chemical Warfare, June 6, 1945, Top Secret.[view]

[2].         USAF, Memorandum, Atomic Bomb Assembly Team Requirements, March 19, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
AFSWP, Memorandum, Provision of Bomb Commanders, Weaponeers, Assembly Teams, and Assembly Facilities, March 29, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Bomb Assembly Teams, June 9, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Bomb Assembly Teams, July 1, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
AFSWP, Memorandum, Assembly Team Training, December 17, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
AFSWP, Memorandum, Assembly Capability, April 21, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to COMGENSAC, June 10, 1949, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, CG SAC to CS USAF, July 1, 1949, Top Secret; AFSWP, Memorandum, Assembly Capabilities, July 8, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Atomic Bomb Assembly Teams, August 23, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
AFSWP, Memorandum, Memorandum for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 9, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Atomic Bomb Assembly Teams, November 9, 1949, Top Secret.[view]

[3].         AEC, Report, Atomic Energy Commission - Military Liaison Committee: Minutes of Fourteenth Conference, August 13, 1947, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Emergency Protection of Facilities (Armed Forces Special Weapons Project), December 31, 1947, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Special Weapons Air Strips - Camp Hood, Texas and Camp Campbell, Kentucky, February 6, 1948, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Camp Campbell and Camp Hood Air Force Base Construction Program, November 9, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Diary, Commanding General’s Daily Diary, April 11, 1950, Top Secret.[view]

[4].         USAF, Report, [extract] Commanders’ Conference Notes: General LeMay, March 28, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[5].         USAF, Memorandum, Airstrip, Camp Hood, Texas, February 17, 1948, Restricted;[view]

USAF, Memorandum, Airstrip, Camp Hood, Texas, February 17, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
AEC, Report, Atomic Energy Commission - Military Liaison Committee Minutes of Twenty-Eighth Conference, April 1, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
AEC, Memorandum, Increasing Number of A Bombs for Joint Maneuvers, September 3, 1948, Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Daily Diary, December 16, 1948, Confidential/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Diary, Commanding General’s Daily Diary, April 11, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Presentation by the Strategic Air Command, April 25, 26, & 27, 1950, Top Secret.[view]

[6].         USAF, Report, Presentation by the Strategic Air Command, April 25, 26, & 27, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Air Force Council Meeting, April 4, 1952, Top Secret/Eyes Only.[view]

[7].         JCS, Report, Evaluation of Current Strategic Air Offensive Plans, December 21, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Memorandum by the Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force, on Evaluation of Current Strategic Air Offensive Plans, January 14, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, The Atomic Bomb as a Weapon of Tactical Air Warfare, July 20, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Evaluation of the Target System for Implementation of Joint Outline Emergency War Plan, November 14, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Operational and Planning Conference, January 16, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Commanders Conference, April 25, 26, & 27, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Deficiencies Affecting Combat Capability, October 1, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Report on TDY to Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, December 26, 1950, Secret.[view]

[8].         DOD, Letter, Bush to Bradley, April 13, 1950, Top Secret; USAF, Memorandum, Landon to Vandenberg, Letter From Dr. V. Bush to General Bradley, June 13, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Responsibility for the Continuing Selection of Targets and Target Systems for the Strategic Air Offensive, July 27, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Target Selections for the Strategic Air Offensive, August 10, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Target Selections for the Strategic Air Offensive, August 12, 1950, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
US Army, Cable, Bolte to MacArthur, December 21, 1950, Top Secret/Personal For; US Army, Cable, CINCFE to DA, December 24, 1950, Top Secret/Personal For; USAF, Letter, LeMay to White, May 7, 1951, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, Vandenberg to Norstad, July 16, 1951, Top Secret; USAF, Letter, Norstad to LeMay, August 11, 1951, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CGSAC et al., August 23, 1951, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, Norstad to Vandenberg, August 25, 1951, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CINCAIRCENT, September 11, 1951, Top Secret/NOFORN; USAF, Letter, White to LeMay, October 9, 1951, Top Secret;.

[9].         USAF, Memorandum, Use of Atomics and BW-CW for Retardation in Europe, March 26, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[10].       USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CG AMC et al., March 7, 1952, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, CG AMC to HQ USAF, March 13, 1952, Top Secret; DOD, Report, Report on Chemical and Biological Warfare Readiness, July 1, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, BW-CW Logistics Out of the ZI, August 18, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[11].       USAF, Memorandum, Logistic Support for SAC in BW, Phase I, August 26, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[12].       USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CG AMC et al., December 12, 1952, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, CGSAC to CGAF 15 et al., December 17, 1952, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, CG FEAF to CG MATS, February 14, 1953, Top Secret; USAF, Memorandum, Memorandum for Record, September 1, 1953, Top Secret.[view]

[13].       JCS, Memorandum, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical Agents, March 12, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Report, Substance of Discussions of State - Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, March 27, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical Agents, April 2, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical Agents, April 15, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Report, Substance of Discussions of State - Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, April 24, 1953, Top Secret.[view]

[14].       JCS, Memorandum, Shipment of Chemical Warfare Munitions to the Far East, May 25, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Shipment of Chemical Warfare Munitions to the Far East, July 8, 1954, Top Secret.[view]

[15].       State Department, Report, Substance of Discussions of State - Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, April 10, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, deleted [sale of sarin nerve gas to Great Britain], April 14, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Aide-Memoire, April 16, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
U.S. Army, Memorandum, UK Request for Nerve Gas Under MDAP, August 10, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, British Request for GB (JCS 1837/47), March 1, 1954, Top Secret.[view]

[16].       USAF, Cable, COMDRSAC to COFS USAF, February 4, 1954, Top Secret.

[17].       Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Annex to Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1954, September 1954, Top Secret, p. 2, CMH.

[18].       USAF, Cable, COMSAC to COFS USA, April 3, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Briefing Given by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to CINCFE, CINCPAC and COMSAC Planning Representatives, April 16, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Strategic Air Command Far East Outline Plan No. 8-54 (SAC-FEOP 8-54), July 23, 1954, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Cable, COMFEAF to CS USAF, November 18, 1954, Top Secret; US Navy, Cable, CNO to CINCPAC, November 24, 1954, Top Secret/Eyes Only; US Navy, Report, CINCPACFLT OP-PLAN 51-Z-55, February 1955, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Limited Effect Target System for Communist China, March 1955, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Capabilities of Entire USAF Considering Atomic vs H.E. Weapons - Specific Inference to Matsu and Quemoy Applications, March 31, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
US Navy, Cable, CHMAAG Formosa to CINCPAC, April 8, 1955, Top Secret; US Navy, Cable, CINCPAC to CNO, April 9, 1955, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Memorandum for the Secretary, March 25, 1956, Top Secret.[view]

[19].       USAF, Letter, LeMay to Twining, June 6, 1955, Top Secret.

[20].       State Department, Cable, Paris to Secretary of State, November 4, 1955, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Nuclear Deployment in France, January 17, 1956, Top Secret;[view]

State Department, Memorandum, Deployment of Nuclear Weapons in Italy and Metropolitan France, January 19, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Deployment of Nuclear Weapons to Italy, April 10, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Dillon Proposal re Training French Air Squadron, June 2, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, CINCUSAFE to CSAF, June 27, 1956, Top Secret; DOD, Letter, Gray to Murphy, October 10, 1956, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Military Atomic Energy Cooperation with France, December 7, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, CINCSUSAFE to COFS USAF, February 13, 1957, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, NATO Atomic Stockpile, July 1, 1957, Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Aide-Memoire, September 18, 1957, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Background for General Norstad’s Talk With General Ely and Decourcel, October 22, 1957, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, NATO Atomic Stockpile Negotiations With the French, June 27, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, Thurston to Timmons, December 22, 1958, Secret; AEC, Report, Proposed Mutual Defense Agreement for Cooperation With the Government of France, May 1961, Secret.

[21].       US Army, Memorandum, Information on CW and Discussion of the Minimum Destruction Concept of Warfare, June 8, 1956, Top Secret, NARA.[view]

[22].       State Department, Memorandum, Memorandum for the File, March 21, 1956, Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, COFS USAF to CINCUSAFE et al., July 3, 1956, Top Secret.

[23].       US Army, Index Card, CINCSAC Weapons Programming, September 23, 1957, Top Secret.[view]

[24].       US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Estimate of CBR Situation Top Secret Supplement, January 1, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, Review of Bacteriological and Chemical Warfare Planning, July 9, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Estimate of CBR Situation Top Secret Supplement, January 1, 1959, Top Secret.[view]

[25].       US Army, USNMR to DEPTAR for JCS, February 4, 1958, Top Secret; NATO, Cable, SGN WASH DC to SGREP Paris, August 7, 1958, NATO Secret; NATO, Cable, SGREP Paris to SGN WASH DC, August 8, 1958, NATO Secret; NATO, Report, [extract] History, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe: 1958, 1959, Cosmic Top Secret.[view]

[26].       NATO, Cable, SGREP Paris to SGN WASH DC, August 21, 1958, NATO Secret; NATO, Report, [extract] History, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe: 1958, 1959, Cosmic Top Secret.[view]

[27].       JCS, Memorandum, WSEG Report No. 31, “A Reappraisal of Biological Warfare”, September 16, 1958, Top Secret.[view]

[28].       U.S. Army, Index Card, Shipment of Toxic Chemical Munitions to Germany, August 21, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Biological and Chemical Capability, August 31, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Negotiations for Storage Rights in USEUCOM, December 17, 1962, Top Secret; JCS, Memorandum, Action to Improve CBR Capability, December 31, 1962, Top Secret.

[29].       US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Estimate of CBR Situation Top Secret Supplement, January 1, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Biological and Chemical Capability, August 31, 1959, Top Secret.[view]

[30].       DOD, Memorandum, Evaluation of the Mustard Weapon System, January 22, 1962, Secret.

[31].       DOD, Report, History of the Phase Out of Large Yield Weapons, September 14, 1967, Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, [extract] History of Strategic Air Command: January-June 1968, February 1969, Top Secret/NOFORN/Restricted Data.[view]

[32].       NATO, Report, Joint Meeting of the Foreign and Defence Ministers, May 5, 1962, Cosmic Top Secret; NATO, Report, Statement Made on Saturday 5 May by Secretary McNamara at the NATO Ministerial Meeting in Athens, May 5, 1962, Cosmic Top Secret; DOD, Speech, Remarks by Secretary McNamara, NATO Ministerial Meeting, 5 May 1962: Restricted Session, May 5, 1962, Top Secret.

[33].       DOD, Letter, Nitze to Johnson, July 27, 1962, Top Secret.

[34].       JCS, Report, Further Study of Requirements for Tactical Nuclear Weapons, April 1963, Top Secret/Restricted Data.

[35].       State Department, Report, Working Group on NATO Capabilities: Trilateral Talks, November 2, 1966, Top Secret.[view]

[36].       DOD, Cable, CINCSTRIKE to Amconsul Dacca, August 9, 1967, Secret; DOD, Cable, CINCSTRIKE to Amconsul Dacca, August 18, 1967, Secret.

[37].       DOD, Report, U.S. Strategic Nuclear Force Capabilities, February 14, 1969, Top Secret.[view]

[38].       AEC, Report, Preliminary Information Regarding Fire at Rocky Flats in Buildings 776-777, May 16, 1969, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Letter, Seaborg to Holifield, May 22, 1969, Secret/Restricted Data; AEC, Letter, Seaborg to Holifield, June 13, 1969, Secret/Restricted Data; AEC, Letter, Hollingsworth to Holifield, June 25, 1969, Secret/Restricted Data.

[39].       CIA, Memorandum, Nerve Gas Incident on Okinawa, July 18, 1969, Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Amembassy Tokyo to Secretary of State, July 19, 1969, Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Tokyo, July 19, 1969, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy Tokyo to Secretary of State, July 25, 1969, Confidential; State Department, Memorandum, Okinawa/Japan: Nerve Gas Incident Causes Furor, July 25, 1969, Confidential/NOFORN;[view]
State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Dkakarta, July 27, 1969, Confidential. See also Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2016), p. 337; “Okinawa Nerve Gas Not Going to Ore.,” Japan Times, May 25, 1970; “U.S. Completes Gas Transfer,” Japan Times, September 10, 1971).

[40].       State Department, Cable, Amembassy Bonn to Secretary of State, July 30, 1969, Top Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Bonn, July 31, 1969, Top Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to CINCUSAREUR, August 1, 1969, Top Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amconsul Lahore, August 1, 1969, Top Secret.

[41].       CIA, Briefing, The Warsaw Pact Forces, November 17, 1970, Top Secret.[view]

[42].       NSC, Report, [extract] U.S. Strategic Objectives and Force Posture: Executive Summary, January 3, 1971, Top Secret.[view]

[43].       State Department, Cable, Amembassy Tokyo to Secretary of State, July 19, 1972, Top Secret.

[44].       State Department, Memorandum, Department of State Position on NSSM 192, US Chemical Weapons Posture, July 16, 1974, Top Secret.[view]

[45].       CIA, Report, The President’s Daily Brief, December 5, 1974, Top Secret/For the President Only.[view]

[46].       GAO, Report, [extract] Need to Reexamine Some Support Costs Which the U.S. Provides to NATO, August 25, 1975, Unclassified.[view]

[47].       JCS, Memorandum, Increase of US Army Forces in Korea, February 21, 1968, Secret.[view]

[48].       NSC, Memorandum, SCC Meeting on PRM-37 - Chemical Weapons, November 30, 1978, Secret.[view]

[49].       US Army, Report, [extract] Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe: 1945-1991, 2005, Unclassified.[view]

[50].       White House, Directive, U.S. Policy on the New Zealand Port Access Issue, October 21, 1985, Secret.[view]

[51].       US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Report of Temporary Duty in Europe, 26 February - 31 March 1950, April 13, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
CIA, Estimate, The Possibility of Soviet Employment of BW and CW in the Event of Attacks Upon the US, January 10, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Brief of “The Probability of Soviet Employment of BW and CW In the Event of Attacks Upon the U.S., January 22, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Staff Study: BW-CW Program in USAF, June 11, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Estimate of Soviet Capability for Waging Biological and Chemical Warfare, February 1, 1954, Secret;[view]
CIA, Article, The Enigma of Soviet BW, Spring 1965, Secret;[view]
CIA, Estimate, Soviet Capabilities and Intentions With Respect to Chemical Warfare, August 19, 1965, Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, James to Weiss, September 16, 1965, Top Secret; NSC, Report, U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents (NSAM 59), November 10, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, NSSM 59 U.S. Policy on CW-BW: Analytical Summary, November 10, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
CIA, Report, Soviet Offensive Chemical Warfare Capabilities: A Preliminary Reassessment, June 1970, Top Secret [codewords not declassified];[view]
NPIC, Report, Comparison of Production Buildings at Shikhany, Dzerzhink Rulon 148, and Vologograd Beketovka 91, USSR, September 1970, Top Secret Chess Ruff;[view]
State Department, Report, Summary of the NSSM-157 Study, February 2, 1971, Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, Chemical Warfare Policy, June 29, 1972, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Recommendation for Consideration by 40 Committee, November 26, 1973, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, Briefing on Chemical Warfare, June 20, 1975, Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, DSB Summer Study on Chemical Warfare, November 25, 1980, Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Draft Paper for Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Chemical Weapons Modernization, January 19, 1982, Secret/NOFORN;[view]
NSC, Report, The Threat, February 10, 1983, Secret/NOFORN;[view]
GAO, Report, Chemical Warfare: Many Unanswered Questions, April 29, 1983, Secret;[view]
DIA, Report, Continuing Development of Chemical Weapons Capabilities in the USSR, October 1983, Unclassified;[view]
DIA, Report, Soviet Chemical Weapons Threat, 1985, Unclassified;[view]
CIA, Estimate, Soviet Chemical and Biological Warfare Program, August 1986, Top Secret [codewords not declassified];[view]
DOD, Report, Ams Control Briefing Book for Secretary of Defense Visit to European Capitals: 21-31 October 1989, October 19, 1989, Secret/NOFORN;[view]

[52].       US Army, Article, Wave of Change: Army Transformation at Aberdeen Proving Ground Reaches Technical Escort Unit, Winter 2005, Unclassified.[view]

[53].       USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to USCINCEUR, March 2, 1956, Top Secret.

[54].       White House, Memorandum, Mr. Strauss, February 14, 1957, Secret, DDEL.[view]

[55].       US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Chemical Corps Project Program for 1949, April 13, 1949, Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Porton Anthrax Investigation, July 23, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[56].       JCS, Memorandum, Biological Warfare, February 13, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[57].       US Army, Report, Information on CW and Discussion of the Minimum Destruction Concept of Warfare, June 8, 1956, Top Secret.[view]

[58].       US Army, Briefing, Status of the BW Program, April 23, 1956, Top Secret.[view]

[59].       Department of Defense, Memorandum, Public Information Program CEBAR, July 21, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
DOD, Directive, Policy on Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare, November 28, 1951, Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Briefing for General Yates, April 27, 1953, Top Secret.[view]

[60].       JCS, Memorandum, Clearance of Shipment of Toxic Chemical Warfare Munitions to the Far East, April 16, 1954, Top Secret.[view]

[61].       State Department, Memorandum, Suggestions for Publicity on Air Defense Weapons, January 4, 1957, Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Nuclear Weapons for Air Defense Purposes, January 15, 1957, Secret.[view]

[62].       See for example RAND Corporation, Memorandum, On the Risk of an Accidental or Unauthorized Nuclear Detonation, October 15, 1958, Confidential/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, A Survey of Nuclear Weapons Safety Problems and the Possibilities for Increasing Safety in Bomb and Warhead Design, February 1959, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Report, Ammunitions Letter: Summary of Nuclear Weapons Incidents (AF Form 1058) and Related Problems: Calendar Year 1958, June 23, 1960, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
DOD, Letter, Howard to Holifield, April 22, 1966, Secret/Restricted Data; AEC, Report, Summary of Air Force Nuclear Accidents, February 6, 1968, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Report, USAF Nuclear Safety, January - March 1970, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, Report, Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving U,S. Nuclear Weapons: 1950-1980, April 1981, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, A Review of the US Nuclear Weapon Safety Program - 1945 to 1986 , February 1987, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
DOE, Report, A Summary of Accidents and Significant Incidents Involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Weapon Systems, June 2, 1990, Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[63].       AEC, Report, A Survey of Nuclear Weapons Safety Problems and the Possibilities for Increasing Safety in Bomb and Warhead Design, February 1959, Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[64].       USAF, Report, Nuclear Armament: Its Acquisition, Control and Application to Manned Interceptors 1951-1963, 1964, Secret/Restricted Data.

[65].       AEC, Letter, Bradbury and Schwartz to Starbird, January 5, 1961, Secret/Restricted Data.

[66].       White House, Letter, Kennedy to Holifield, May 3, 1961, Secret.

[67].       State Department, Memorandum, Briefing for Mr. Acheson on Safety and Stability of Nuclear Weapons, February 21, 1961, Top Secret/Restricted Data.

[68].       State Department, Memorandum, Davy Crockett Deployment, June 18, 1962, Secret; DOD, Memorandum, Views of Dr. Enthoven on Tactical Nuclear Waerfare, February 7, 1963, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Davy Crockett Deployment, June 18, 1964, Secret;[view]
DOD, Report, History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 Through September 1977, February 1978, Top Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[69].       US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Biological and Chemical Capability, August 31, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Reappraisal of Biological Warfare, November 4, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Chemical and Biological Warfare, May 31, 1960, Top Secret;[view]
White House, Memorandum, Memorandum for Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, October 22, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, NSSM 59 U.S. Policy on CW-BW: Analytical Summary, November 10, 1969, Top Secret;[view]

[70].       AEC, Report, Weapons Program of the Los Alamos Laboratory, May 14, 1948, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Report of the Manager, Santa Fe Operations, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission: July 1947 to July 1950, November 1, 1950, Top Secret/Restricted Data; DOE, Report, Sandia National Laboratories: A Product of Postwar Readiness: 1945-1950, April 1988, Unclassified.[view]

[71].       Department of Energy, Report, The Office of Military Application, November 1978, Unclassified.[view]

[72].       Necah Furman, Sandia National Laboratories: The Postwar Decade, (Albuquerque, 1990), Unclassified, p. 132. See also David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, 1945 to 1950,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 38, no. 5 (May 1982), p. 29.

[73].       US Army, Memorandum, Organization of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, July 8, 1947, Secret, NARA;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Organization of Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, August 21, 1947, Secret, NARA.[view]

[74].       Sandia, Memorandum, Fuzing, September 26, 1949, Secret/RD, OSTI.; JCS, Report, [extract] The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy: Volume II: 1947-1949, 1996, Unclassified.[view]

[75].       Atomic Energy Commission, Report to the President of the United States From the Atomic Energy Commission: January 1 - April 1, 1947, April 3, 1947, Top Secret, Chuck Hansen Collection, Box 11, Folder: 1947, National Security Archive; L. Wainstein et al., The Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control and Warning: 1945-1972 (Arlington: Institute for Defense Analysis, June 1975), Top Secret/RD, p. 34; Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 Through September 1977, February 1978, Top Secret/RD, p. 12, DOD FOIA. See also David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, 1945 to 1950,” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, May 1982, p. 27.

[76].       Defense Nuclear Agency, Report, Operation SANDSTONE 1948, December 19, 1983, Unclassified, DTRA, p. 18.

[77].       L. Wainstein et al., The Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control and Warning: 1945-1972 (Arlington: Institute for Defense Analysis, June 1975), Top Secret/RD, p. 34; Lee Bowen and Robert D. Little, Air University Historical Liaison Office, A History of the Air Force Atomic Energy Program, 1943-1953, 1958, Top Secret/FRD, Vol. V Atomic Weapon Delivery Systems, p. 6, USAF FOIA.

[78].       (L. Wainstein et al., The Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control and Warning: 1945-1972 (Arlington: Institute for Defense Analysis, June 1975), Top Secret/RD, p. 34; DOE, Summary of Declassified Nuclear Stockpile Information, 1994, Unclassified.

[79].       For the detonation of the USSR’s first atomic bomb, known within the US government as JOE I, see AEC, Letter, Pike to McMahon, August 31, 1949, Secret; White House, Report, [draft report regarding Soviet nuclear test], undated but circa September 1949, Top Secret; CIA, Memorandum, Hillenkoetter to President, September 9, 1949, Top Secret Control/US Officials Only; CIA, Report, Status of the USSR Atomic Energy Project, October 1, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Implications of Soviet Explosion, October 5, 1949, Top Secret.[view]
For the impact of the Korean War on the nuclear weapons program, see NSC, Memorandum, Lay to Secretary of State et al., August 8, 1950, Secret; USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CG SAC, October 6, 1950, Top Secret/Restricted Data; JCAE, Memorandum, Memorandum for the Files, November 28, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
AEC, Report, Progress Report to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy: June Through November 1950, Part III - Weapons, December 15, 1950, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Weapons Part of Progress Report to the Joint Committee - December 1950 Through May 1951, May 28, 1951, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Preliminary Examination of the Work Load at Santa Fe Operations, December 7, 1951, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Progress Report to the Joint Committee, June Through November 1951: Part III - Weapons, December 17, 1951, Top Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[80].       NSC, Memorandum, Lay to The President, October 2, 1950, Top Secret/RD, HSTL; AEC, Progress Report to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy: June - November 1950, December 15, 1950, Part III: Weapons, Top Secret/RD, NARA.

[81].       AEC, Report, Program Status Report, June 30, 1954, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Program Status Report, June 30, 1955, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
White House, Memorandum, Memorandum of Conference With the President, February 12, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
DOE, Report, The Office of Military Application, November 1978, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, The United States Nuclear Weapon Program: A Summary History, March 1983, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, History of the Production Complex: The Methods of Site Selection, September 1987, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, A Short History of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile: 1945-1985, January 2, 1991, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] Army Ammunition Production During the Cold War (1946-1989), April 2009, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Press Release, DOE Facts: Declassification of the United States Plutonium Inventory and Release of Report, “Plutonium: The First 50 Years”, 1994, Unclassified.[view]

[82].       DOE, Report, Tech Area II: A History, July 1998, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Historical Context of W Site, Technical Area 41, September 2004, Unclassified.[view]

[83].       US Atomic Energy Commission, Monthly Summary of Activities: July 1948, August 31, 1948, Secret, Hansen Collection, Box 12, Folder 1948, National Security Archive; Atomic Energy Commission, Quarterly Progress Report: July - September 1948, November 19, 1948, Top Secret/RD, Chuck Hansen Collection, Box 12, Folder 1948, National Security Archive; Atomic Energy Commission, Monthly Status and Progress Reports for March 1949, April 19, 1949, Secret/RD, Chuck Hansen Collection, Box 12, Folder 1949, National Security Archive; Atomic Energy Commission, Monthly Status and Progress Reports for July 1949, August 19, 1949, Secret/RD, Chuck Hansen Collection, Box 12, Folder 1949, National Security Archive; Atomic Energy Commission, Monthly Status and Progress Reports for October 1949, November 22, 1949, Secret/RD, Chuck Hansen Collection, Box 12, Folder 1949, National Security Archive; Atomic Energy Commission, Monthly Status and Progress Reports for November 1949, December 21, 1949, Secret/RD, Chuck Hansen Collection, Box 12, Folder 1949, National Security Archive AEC, Report of the Manager, Santa Fe Operations: July 1950 to January 1954, January 1954, Secret/RD, p. 50, RG-326, NARA; AEC, Report, Project History of Line I Operations at Iowa Ordnance Plant: January 1, 1947 - July 1, 1954, October 1954, Secret/Restricted Data.[view]
See also Ann Arnold Lemert, First You Take a Pick & Shovel: The Story of the Mason Companies (Lexington, Kentucky: The John Bradford Press, 1979), pp. 160-168.

[84].       ORAU, Report, Technical Basis Document for Atomic Energy Operations at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant (IAAP), March 14, 2005, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] Army Ammunition Production During the Cold War (1946-1989), April 2009, Unclassified.[view]
See also Ann Arnold Lemert, First You Take Pick and Shovel: The Story of the Mason Companies (Lexington, Kentucky: The John Bradford Press, 1979), p. 184.

[85].       ERDA, Environmental Impact Statement, Pantex Plant, Amarillo, Texas, June 1976, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, A Manual for the Prediction of Blast and Fragment Loadings on Structures, November 1980, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Final Environmental Impact Statement: Pantex Plant Site, Amarillo, Texas, October 1983, Unclassified; DOE, Report, History of the Production Complex: The Methods of Site Selection, September 1987, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Energy Technology Review: Dismantling the Cold War Arsenal, November-December 1993, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, [extract] Linking Legacies: Connecting the Cold War Nuclear Weapons Production Processes to Their Environmental Consequences, January 1997, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Transparency and Verification Options: An Initial Analysis of Approaches for Monitoring Warhead Dismantlement, May 19, 1997, FOUO; ORAU, Report, Technical Basis Document for the Pantex Plant - Site Description, March 20, 2004, Unclassified;[view]
NIOSH, Report, Pantex Plant Site Expert Interview Summary, July 2011, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, PPT Presentation, Pantex History, date unknown, Unclassified.[view]

[86].       The reclassified documents in question are Daniel R. Bilderback and Michael S. Binder, Early DoD Sited Nuclear Warhead Infrastructure USAC Legacy Project, University of South Carolina, Columbia, and Milsite Recon, Dallas, TX. (Prepared for the Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program, May 1999); Kris C. Mitchell, Rhetoric to Reality: A Cold War Context Statement for the Pantex Plant, 1951-1991, (BWXT Pantex, Amarillo, Texas, 2001).

[87].       DOE, Report, Sandia National Laboratories: A Product of Postwar Readiness: 1945-1950, April 1988, Unclassified;[view]
USAF, Report, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico: RCRA Facility Investigation Report: Appendix IV Stage 2D-2 Areas of Concern, June 28, 1996, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Tech Area II: A History, July 1998, Unclassified;[view]
USAF, Report, [extract] National Register of Historic Plants: Historic Context and Evaluation for Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 2003, Unclassified;[view]
USAF, Report, [extract] Keeping the Edge: Air Force Material Command Cold War Context (1945-1991), August 2003, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Historical Context of W Site, Technical Area 41, September 2004, Unclassified.[view]

[88].       See for example: US Army, Memorandum, Emergency Protection of Facilities (Armed Forces Special Weapons Project), December 31, 1947, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Special Weapons Air Strips - Camp Hood, Texas and Camp Campbell, Kentucky, February 6, 1948, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Camp Campbell and Camp Hood Air Force Base Construction Program, November 9, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Future Storage Requirements for Atomic Weapons, June 20, 1950, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Annual Report to the President for 1951, April 8, 1952, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC-AFSWP, Agreement, AEC-AFSWP Agreement Covering the Operation of National Stockpile Sites Under the Command of AFSWP, June 23, 1952, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Report, History of Air Material Command Participation in the Atomic Energy Program: April - December 1951, April 1953, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Report, [extracts] The History of Air Force Participation in the Atomic Energy Program, 1943-1953, Top Secret/Restricted Data; JCS, Report, Determination of Threat to the Atomic Weapons Storage Sites and Associated Installations, May 1954, Top Secret;[view]
AFSWP. Report, First History of AFSWP 1947-1954, Volume 1 - 1947-1948 - Chapter 4 - Headquarters, 1955, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Agreement, AEC/ALO - AMC Storage Operations Agreement, May 22, 1958, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Memorandum, Highlights of JCAE Visit - November 19th and 20th, November 24, 1958, Secret/Restricted Data; DOE, Report, Site Summary for Stony Brook Air Force Station (AFS), Westover Air Reserve Base (ARB), Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, June 1995, Unclassified;[view]
NPS, Report, Photographs, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Ellsworth Air Force Base/Rushmore Air Force Station, Rapid City, South Dakota, June 1996, Unclassified;[view]
USAF, Report, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico: RCRA Facility Investigation Report: Appendix IV Stage 2D-2 Areas of Concern, June 28, 1996, Unclassified;[view]
USAF, Report, [extract] Cold War Infrastructure for Strategic Air Command: The Bomb Mission, November 1999, Unclassified, USAF; USAF, Report, [extract] National Register of Historic Plants: Historic Context and Evaluation for Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 2003, Unclassified;[view]
USAF, Report, [extract] Keeping the Edge: Air Force Material Command Cold War Context (1945-1991), August 2003, Unclassified;[view]
NPS, Report, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Medina National Stockpile Site, Building No. 400, September 2005, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, Fort Hood Building and Landscape with WWII and Col War Context, March 2007, Unclassified; ORAU, Report, SEC Petition Evaluation Report: Clarksville Modification Center, Ft. Campbell, May 31, 2012, Unclassified;[view]
NPS, Report, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Loring Air Force Base, Weapons Storage Area, Limestone, Maine, date unknown, Unclassified.[view]

[89].       AEC, Letter, Starbird to Ramey, November 17, 1960, Secret/Restricted Data.

[90].       AEC, Report, Report of the Manager Santa Fe Operations, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission: July 1, 1950 to January 1, 1954, January 1, 1954, Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[91].       DOE, Report, A Short History of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile: 1945-1985, January 2, 1991, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
DOE, Report, The Evolution of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Design: Trinity to King, January 2, 1991, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
DOE Press Release, DOE Facts: Declassification of Certain Characteristics of the United States Nuclear Weapon Stockpile, 1994, Unclassified.[view]

[92].       NSC, Memorandum, Answers to Your Questions on Nuclear Expenditures, June 21, 1963, Secret; JCAE, Hearing, Military Applications of Nuclear Technology, April 16, 1973, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, The United States Nuclear Weapon Program: A Summary History, March 1983, Unclassified;[view]

[93].       DOE, Report, A Short History of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile: 1945-1985, January 2, 1991, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
DOE Press Release, DOE Facts: Declassification of Certain Characteristics of the United States Nuclear Weapon Stockpile, 1994, Unclassified.[view]

[94].       DOE Press Release, DOE Facts: Declassification of Certain Characteristics of the United States Nuclear Weapon Stockpile, 1994, Unclassified.[view]

[95].       DOD, Report, Nuclear Matters: A Practical Guide, 2008, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, Report, Nuclear Weapons Afloat: End of Fiscal Years 1953-1991, date unknown, Unclassified.[view]

[96].       DOE Press Release, DOE Facts: Declassification of Certain Characteristics of the United States Nuclear Weapon Stockpile, 1994, Unclassified.[view]

[97].       DOD, Memorandum, Reducing the United States Nuclear Arsenal, September 28, 1991, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, PPT Presentation, President’s Nuclear Initiatives, 1992, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Article, Nuke... “End of Mission, Out”, August 1992, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, Report, Nuclear Posture Review, December 2001, Secret/Formerly Restricted Data/NOFORN;[view]
DOD, Report, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear Capabilities: Report Summary, December 2006, Unclassified.[view]

[98].       DOE, Report, Energy Technology Review: Dismantling the Cold War Arsenal, November-December 1993, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Transparency and Verification Options: An Initial Analysis of Approaches for Monitoring Warhead Dismantlement, May 19, 1997, FOUO; GAO, Report, Nuclear Weapons: Actions Needed by NNSA to Clarify Dismantlement Performance Goal, April 2014, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, PPT Presentation, Pantex History, date unknown, Unclassified.[view]

[99].       DOD, Report, Nuclear Matters: A Practical Guide, 2008, Unclassified.[view]
; GAO, Report, Nuclear Weapons: Views on NNSA’s Proposal to Transform the Nuclear Weapons Complex, July 17, 2008, Unclassified.[view]

[100].     US Congress, Hearings, Nuclear Weapons Modernization Programs: Military, Technical, and Political Requirements for the B61 Life Extension Program and Future Stockpile Strategy, October 29, 2013, Unclassified.[view]

[101].     Among the most interesting documents ini this collection concerning tactical weapons are the following: JCS, Memorandum, Correspondence from Senator McMahon Concerning Tactical Atomic Weapons, September 24, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Strategic Air Command Commander’s Conference, January 19, 1953, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
US Army, Report, Concepts and Doctrine for Future Warfare, Conventional or Nuclear: 1960-1970, January 14, 1955, Top Secret/US Army Eyes Only;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Your Question on Requirements for Tactical Nuclear Weapons In Limited War - Interim Report, July 16, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
JCAE, Letter, Holifield et al. To The President, May 14, 1962, Secret/Restricted Data; White House, Memorandum, Gilpatric Memorandum Dated June 9, 1962, Re Reply to JCAE May 14 Letter to The President, June 14, 1962, Top Secret; DOD, Memorandum, Tactical Nuclear Study, February 16, 1963, Secret/Restricted Data; DOD, Report, Nuclear Forces of the Alliance: Nuclear Forces Covering SACEUR’s Threat List. January 28, 1963, Top Secret; JCS, Report, Further Study of Requirements for Tactical Nuclear Weapons, April 1963, Top Secret/Restricted Data; DOD, Report, The Role of Tactical Nuclear Forces in NATO Strategy, December 4, 1964, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Response to NSAM 345, May 6, 1966, Secret, DOS FOIA;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, Theater Nuclear Forces, January 6, 1967, Top Secret;[view]
AEC, Report, Tactical Nuclear Warfare, July 1970, Confidential/Formerly Restricted Data;[view]
DOD, Report, The Theater Nuclear Force Posture in Europe: A Report to the United States Congress, April 1975, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, Report, Proceedings of the Tactical Nuclear Weapons Symposium, September 3-5, 1989, Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[102].     USAF, Cable, October 24, 1952, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, CINCUSAFE to CSAF, January 8, 1953, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, CINCUSAFE to CSAF, February 11, 1953, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, July 31, 1953, Top Secret. See also Marcelle Size Knaack, Post-World War II Bombers: 1945-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1988), pp. 81-82; Col. George M. Lunsford, USAF (ret.), “The First Atomic Fighter Wing,” Air Force Magazine, June 1976, p. 81.

[103].     State Department, Letter, Smith to Conant, May 12, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Letter, Conant to Smith, May 20, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Letter, Dulles to Wilson, June 7, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Notes Re Discussion With Col. Elliott and Col. Abbott, June 11, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Notes Re Discussion With General Smith, July 6, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, Smith to Conant, July 7, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Memorandum for the File, July 14, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Amembassy Bonn to Secretary of State, July 24, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Letter, Smith to Conant, August 26, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Letter, Dulles to Wilson, November 23, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Discussion With Mr. Merchant, January 4, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, Hoover to Wilson, February 25, 1955, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Deployment of Atomic Weapons to Western Germany, February 25, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Background Paper - re Nuclear Weapons, May 6, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, CINCUSAFE to COFS USAF, May 17, 1955, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, Transport Control Center MATS to C/S USAF, May 30, 1955, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CINCUSAFE, November 10, 1955, Top Secret; DOD, Report, History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 Through September 1977, February 1978, Top Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[104].     Congress, Transcript, Executive Session, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, February 20, 1961, Top Secret/Restricted Data.

[105].     State Department, Memorandum, NATO Atomic Stockpile, September 3, 1957, Secret.

[106].     USAF, Cable, CG FEAF to HQ USAF, December 16, 1952, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to COMFEAF, February 17, 1954; USAF, Cable, COMSAC to COMDR AF 15 et al., March 29, 1954, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, COMDR SAC to COFS USAF, September 4, 1954, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, COMDR AMC to COM FEAF, February 15, 1956, Top Secret/NOFORN; USAF, Cable, COMDR AMC to AFSWP et al., December 31, 1956, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, COMDR FEAF to COFS USAF, February 8, 1957, Top Secret;.

[107].     US Navy, Cable, CINCPAC to JCS, February 7, 1956, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, COMDR FEAF to COFS USAF, February 8, 1957, Top Secret; JCS, Dispersal of Atomic Weapons in the Bonin and Volcano Islands, June 4, 1957, Top Secret;[view]

[108].     State Department, Letter, Murphy to Sprague, November 13, 1957, Top Secret;.

[109].     White House, Memorandum, Memorandum of Discussion at the 318th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, April 4, 1957, April 4, 1957, Top Secret/Eyes Only; State Department, Memorandum, Obsolescent Modernization for Korea, June 7, 1957, Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Introduction of Honest John and 280mm Gun Into Korea, June 27, 1957, Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Introduction of Honest John and 280mm Gun Into Korea, June 27, 1957, Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Introduction of Honest John and 280mm Gun Into Korea, July 17, 1957, Secret;[view]
US Army, Index Card, Introduction of 280mm Gun & Honest John Units Into Korea, September 21, 1957, Top Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, Introduction Into Korea of the Honest John and 280mm Gun [deleted], December 24, 1957, Top Secret; State Department, Letter, Robertson to Sprague, January 8, 1958, Secret; DOD, Letter, Sprague to Robertson, January 21, 1958, Top Secret.

[110].     NATO, Transcript: Joint Meeting of the Foreign and Defense Ministers, May 5, 1962, Cosmic Top Secret; NATO, Statement Made on Saturday 5 May by Secretary McNamara at the NATO Ministerial Meeting in Athens, May 5, 1962, Cosmic Top Secret.

[111].     NATO, Minutes, NATO Ministerial Meeting, Remarks by Secretary McNamara, December 16, 1963, Cosmic Top Secret.

[112].     H. Tanner, “5,000 A-Warheads Stored for NATO, McNamara Says,” New York Times, November 28, 1965.

[113].     B. Horton, “US Gives NATO New Nuclear Plan,” San Francisco Examiner, October 16, 1968.

[114].     GAO, Report, Need to Reexamine Some Support Costs Which the U.S. Provides to NATO, August 25, 1975, Unclassified.[view]

[115].     JCAE, Report, Development, Use, and Control of Nuclear Energy for the Common Defense and Security and for Peaceful Purposes, June 30, 1976, Unclassified.

[116].     CIA, Briefing, The Warsaw Pact Forces, November 17, 1970, Top Secret.[view]

[117].     Among the more pertinent documents in this collection concerning these US-NATO nuclear weapons agreements, see State Department, Memorandum, Letter From Prime Minister to President Proposing US-UK Talks on Procedural Arrangements Leading to Decision to Launch Nuclear Retaliation, May 8, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Proposed Letter to Defense Regarding Atomic Stockpile Arrangements with the British, September 19, 1960, Secret;[view]
JCAE, Letter, Chairman JCAE to The President, February 15, 1961, Top Secret/Restricted Data; State Department, Testimony, Statement by the Honorable U. Alexis Johnson, Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, on the Report by the Ad-Hoc Subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy: “Study of U.S. and NATO Nuclear Weapons Arrangements”, March 1, 1962, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Consultation With Allies on Use of Nuclear Weapons, September 28, 1964, Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, US-UK Wartime Arrangements, November 22, 1967, Secret;[view]
DOD, Report, Custody of Atomic Weapons: Historical Summary of Principle Actions, July 24, 1968, Secret/Formerly Restricted Data;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, Nuclear Weapons Briefing for Fulbright Committee, May 16, 1970, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
SFRC, Report, U.S. Security Issues in Europe: Burden Sharing and Offset, MBFR and Nuclear Weapons, December 2, 1973, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, Report, Overseas Nuclear Weapons Arrangements, August 1975, Top Secret/Formerly Restricted Data;[view]
NSC, Directive, Presidential Directive/NSC-47: US/Foreign Programs of Cooperation Involving Nuclear Weapons, March 27, 1979, Confidential;[view]

[118].     State Department, Letter, Finn to Millar, April 4, 1960, Secret; State Department, Letter, April 4, 1960, Secret; Department of Defense, Overseas Nuclear Weapons Arrangements, Third Edition, August 1975, Top Secret/Formerly Restricted Data, p. 50.

[119].     Cable, 1282, Brussels to Secretary of State, January 12, 1962, Secret/LIMDIS; Despatch, 627, Amembassy Brussels to Department of State, Transmittal of Initialed Agreement, January 12, 1962, Secret.

[120].     Cable, 947, Paris to Secretary of State, September 6, 1960, Secret; Memorandum, Herter to The President, Atomic Support for French NATO Forces in Germany, September 14, 1960, Secret.

[121].     Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), Agreement for Cooperation for Mutual Defense Purposes With the Republic of France, 87th Congress, 1st Session, 1961.

[122].     State Department, Memorandum, US Nuclear Assistance to France, March 27, 1964, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Coordination of the French Force de Frappe with U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Action Memorandum, January 26, 1965, Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Amembassy Paris to Secretary of State et al., March 11, 1966, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy Paris to Secretary of State, June 28, 1966, Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Paris, June 29, 1966, Secret.

[123].     Department of State, Technical Agreement for the Implementation of the Exchange of Notes of March 27, 1959, March 27, 1959, Secret; Despatch, 1475, Amembassy Bonn to Department off State, Transmission of Original Copy of United States-German Agreement, March 31, 1959, Top Secret; Memorandum, Kohler to The Secretary, Circular 175: Request for Authority to Negotiate Third Party NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement with the Netherlands, March 28, 1960, Secret;[view]
Department of Defense, Overseas Nuclear Weapons Arrangements, Third Edition, August 1975, Top Secret/FRD, p. 54, DOD FOIA.

[124].     Department of Defense, Custody of Atomic Weapons: Historical Summary of Principal Actions, July 24, 1968, Secret/FRD, p. 21.

[125].     AIR 8/2201, COS(56)451, December 14, 1956, cited in Stephen Twigge, “Anglo-American Air Force Collaboration And the Cuban Missile Crisis: A British Perspective,” in Roger G. Miller (ed.), Seeing Off the Bear: Anglo-American Air Power Cooperation During the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1995), p. 210.

[126].     Strategic Air Command (SAC), SAC History Office, History of the Strategic Air Command: 1 January - 30 June 1958, September 2, 1958, Top Secret/RD, p. 81, USAF FOIA.

[127].     Stephen Twigge, “Anglo-American Air Force Collaboration And the Cuban Missile Crisis: A British Perspective,” in Roger G. Miller (ed.), Seeing Off the Bear: Anglo-American Air Power Cooperation During the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1995), p. 211.

[128].     Report to the President and the Prime Minister, Procedures for the Committing to the Attack of Nuclear Retaliatory Forces in the United Kingdom, June 7, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
Letter, Prime Minister Callaghan to President Ford, July 30, 1976, Top Secret.

[129].     Memorandum, Tobin to Tyler, Circular 175 - Request for Authority to Conclude a NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement with the United Kingdom, July 28, 1961, Secret; Memorandum for the Record, Proposed Storage of Nuclear ASW Weapons in the U.K. for Dutch Forces March 23, 1965 Secret.

[130].     Department of Defense, Overseas Nuclear Weapons Arrangements, Third Edition, August 1975, Top Secret/FRD, p. 55. See also Irene Lagani, “U.S. Forces in Greece in the 1950s,” in Simon W. Duke and Wolfgang Krieger (eds.), U.S. Military Forces in Europe: The Early Years, 1945-1970 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), p. 329.

[131].     Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Agreement for Cooperation With Italy for Mutual Defense Purposes, 87th Congress, 1st Session, March 9, 1961, Unclassified.

[132].     Despatch, 595, American Embassy Rome to Department of State, Transmitting Documents Constituting Military Atomic Stockpile and “Consent” Agreements, January 17, 1962, Secretp; Department of Defense, Overseas Nuclear Weapons Arrangements, Third Edition, August 1975, Top Secret/FRD, p. 56).

[133].     Cable, 996, The Hague to Secretary of State, January 26, 1960, Secret; Cable, G-30, Amembassy The Hague to Secretary of State, August 21, 1960, Secret; Cable, 1151, The Hague to Secretary of State, March 11, 1961, Secret; Department of Defense, Overseas Nuclear Weapons Arrangements, Third Edition, August 1975, Top Secret/FRD, p. 58.

[134].     Portugal MOD, Letter, Ferraz to Norstad, August 2, 1960, Top Secret.

[135].     State Department, Letter, Burns to Popper, March 6, 1964, Top Secret; White House, Memorandum, U.S.-Spanish Bases Agreement, November 29, 1968, Confidential.[view]

[136].     DOD, Memorandum, Base Rights/New Treaty With Spain - Information Memorandum, January 29, 1976, Secret.[view]

[137].     USAF, Letter, Caigie to LeMay, August 2, 1954, Top Secret/NOFORN; Department of Defense, Overseas Nuclear Weapons Arrangements, Third Edition, August 1975, Top Secret/FRD, p. 62.

[138].     US Army, USNMR to DEPTAR for JCS, February 4, 1958, Top Secret; NATO, Cable, SGN WASH DC to SGREP Paris, August 7, 1958, NATO Secret; NATO, Cable, SGREP Paris to SGN WASH DC, August 8, 1958, NATO Secret; NATO, Cable, SGREP Paris to SGN WASH DC, August 21, 1958, NATO Secret; NATO, Report, [extract] History, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe: 1958, 1959, Cosmic Top Secret.[view]

[139].     The best publicly-available works on the US-Canadian nuclear weapons relationship are John Clearwater, Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada’s Cold War Arsenal (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1998), and his companion book John Clearwater, U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada (Toronto: The Dundurn Group, 1999), which are very well researched using dozens of declassified Canadian government and military documents.

[140].     For Norway, see USAF, Cable, COMDRSAC to COMDRAIRDIV 7, August 26, 1954, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Memorandum for Files, January 20, 1959, Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Second Honest John Battalion; Atomic Warheads for Norway, July 2, 1959, Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Notes on “Advanced Weapons”, April 12, 1961, Secret; State Department, Letter, Fessenden to Thurston, April 21, 1961, Secret. For Denmark, see State Department, Cable, Amembassy Copenhagen to Secretary of State, July 16, 1966, Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Copenhagen, May 3, 1967, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy Copenhagen to Secretary of State, May 8, 1967, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Nuclear Storage, Nuclear Overflights aned Chemical and Biological Warfare Testing in Greenland, June 6, 1968, Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Amembassy Copenhagen to Secretary of State, June 21, 1969, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy Copenhagen to Department of State, June 22, 1970, Confidential.

[141].     USAF, Cable, COMDRSAC to CSUSAF, June 12, 1953, Top Secret; State Department, Report, Substance of Discussions of State - Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, August 9, 1957, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, Murphy to Sprague, August 23, 1957, Top Secret; State Department, Letter, Farley to Peterson, October 22, 1957, Top Secret; State Department, Letter, Murphy to Sprague, November 26, 1957; State Department, Cable, Paris to Amembassy Oslo et al., May 23, 1959, Secret;.

[142].     DOD, Report, History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 Through September 1977, February 1978, Top Secret/Restricted Data.[view]

[143].     Atomic Energy Commission - Military Liaison Committee, Minutes of Twenty-Eighth Conference, April 1, 1948, Top Secret, Chuck Hansen Papers, Box 12, File: 1948, National Security Archive.

[144].     State Department, Memorandum, Korean Situation, June 25, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Diary, Commanding General’s Diary, June 26, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Diary, Commanding General’s Diary, June 27, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, Acheson to Johnson, June 28, 1950, Top Secret.

[145].     USAF, Diary, Commanding General’s Diary, July 11, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to COMGENTHIRDAIRDIV, July 12, 1950, Top Secret; JCS, Cable, JCS to CINCFE et al., July 15, 1950, Top Secret;.

[146].     State Department, Letter, Nitze to The Secretary, July 17, 1950, Top Secret; US Army, Memorandum, Use of the Atomic Bomb in Korea, July 25, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
AFSWP, Cable, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project to Commanding General, Sandia Base, July 27, 1950, Top Secret; USAF, Diary, General LeMay’s Diary, July 28, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Use of Atom Bomb on Korea, August 21, 1950;[view]
JCS, Cable, JCS to CINCFE, August 29, 1950, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to COMGENSAC, August 29, 1950, Top Secret;.

[147].     State Department, Memorandum, no subject, November 4, 1950, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Questions to be Considered Regarding Possible U.S. Use of the Atomic Bomb to Counter Chinese Communist Aggression in Korea, November 9, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
JCAE, Memorandum, Borden to McMahon, November 28, 1950, Top Secret; US Army, Memorandum, Possible Employment of Atomic Bombs in Korea (JCS 2173/1), November 30, 1950, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Notes on Meeting in JCS Conference Room, Pentagon, 8:30 AM, December 1, 1950, December 1, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Memorandum of Conversation With Under Secretary Lovett, December 2, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, COMGENSAC to CS USAF, December 2, 1950, Top Secret; USAF, Diary, Commanding General’s Diary, December 14, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CG FEAF, December 15, 1950, Top Secret; USAF, Letter, LeMay to O’Donnell, December 16, 1950, Top Secret; US Army, Cable, Bolte to MacArthur, December 21, 1950, Top Secret/Personal For; US Army, Cable, CINCFE to DA, December 24, 1950, Top Secret/Personal For; US Army, Memorandum, Tactical Employment of the Atomic Bomb in Korea, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Tactical Employment of the Atomic Bomb in Korea, January 24, 1951, Top Secret.[view]

[148].     State Department, Memorandum, Threat of the Use of Nuclear Weapons Against China in Korean War, March 4, 1965, Top Secret.[view]

[149].     USAF, Cable, COMDRSAC to COFS USAF, February 4, 1954, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, COMSAC to COFS USA, April 3, 1954, Top Secret; JCS, Memorandum, Strategic Air Command Far East Outline Plan No. 8-54 (SAC-FEOP 8-54), July 23, 1954, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Cable, COMFEAF to CS USAF, November 18, 1954, Top Secret; US Navy, Cable, CNO to CINCPAC, November 24, 1954, Top Secret/Eyes Only; US Navy, Report, CINCPACFLT OP-PLAN 51-Z-55, February 1955, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Limited Effect Target System for Communist China, March 1955, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Capabilities of Entire USAF Considering Atomic vs H.E. Weapons - Specific Inference to Matsu and Quemoy Applications, March 31, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
US Navy, Cable, CHMAAG Formosa to CINCPAC, April 8, 1955, Top Secret; US Navy, Cable, CINCPAC to CNO, April 9, 1955, Top Secret. See also Matthew Jones, “Targeting China: U.S. Nuclear Planning and “Massive Retaliation” in East Asia, 1953–1955, “ Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fall 2008, pp. 37–65.

[150].     White House, Report, Memorandum of Conference With the President, August 14, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Cable, JCS to CINCPAC, August 25, 1958, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Taiwan Straits Situation, September 2, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Memorandum of Conversation With the President, September 4, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
US Navy, Report, Taiwan-Quemoy Operation; report of, December 20, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Air Operations in the Taiwan Crisis of 1958, November 1962, Secret.

[151].     JCS, Memorandum, Berlin Contingency Planning, June 26, 1961, Top Secret; NATO, Letter, Norstad to The President, August 11, 1961, Cosmic Top Secret; US Army, Report, USCINCEUR Unilateral Planning for Use of Tripartite Forces With Respect to Berlin, September 21, 1961, Top Secret; JCS, Memorandum, Alert Procedures, January 23, 1962, Top Secret; JCS, Report, US View of the Strategic Environment and Its Implications, February 4, 1962, Top Secret; NATO, Memorandum, Berlin Contingency Planning, March 24, 1962, Cosmic Top Secret; White House, Memorandum, Memorandum for the President, July 2, 1962, Secret; DOD, Report, Considerations Influencing the Transfer, Release, and Use of US Nuclear Weapons, July 6, 1962, Secret/Restricted Data.

[152].     USAF, Cable, CINCONAD to JCS, October 27, 1962, Top Secret; USAF, Report, NORAD/CONAD Participation in the Cuban Crisis, February 1, 1963, Secret/NOFORN.

[153].     State Department, Memorandum, Loading of SACEUR Land-Based Strike Aircraft, October 24, 1962, Top Secret/Restricted Data; White House, Memorandum, Loading of SACEUR Land-Based Alert Strike Aircraft, October 25, 1962, Top Secret/Restricted Data. See also Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 108-109.

[154].     USAF, Memorandum, Air War in Southeast Asia, May 13, 1965, Top Secret;[view]
CIA, Memorandum, Use of Nuclear Weapons in the Vietnam War, March 18, 1966, Top Secret;[view]
IDA, Report, Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia, March 1967, Secret/Formerly Restricted Data;[view]
White House, Cable, Situation Room to Colonel Guay, January 13, 1973, Top Secret/Sensitive Contains Codeword.

[155].     The most important documents in this collection concerning nuclear weapons safety and security are as follows: AEC, Report, A Survey of Nuclear Weapons Safety Problems and the Possibilities for Increasing Safety in Bomb and Warhead Design, February 1959, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Letter, Bradbury and Schwartz to Starbird, January 5, 1961, Secret/Restricted Data; State Department, Memorandum, Briefing for Mr. Acheson on Safety and Stability of Nuclear Weapons, February 21, 1961, Top Secret/Restricted Data; State Department, Memorandum, The Partridge Task Force Report on National Command and Control, January 22,1962, Top Secret; White House, Memorandum, Permissive Links for Nuclear Weapons in NATO, June 6, 1962, Secret/Restricted Data; NSC, Memorandum, Assignment of Highest National Priority to Project PAL (Permissive Links for Nuclear Weapons in NATO), March 22, 1963, Confidential; State Department, Memorandum, Attached Summary Memorandum, May 27, 1964, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, Nuclear Weapons Safety Rules, December 14, 1970, Secret;[view]
DOE, Report, A Review of the US Nuclear Weapon Safety Program - 1945 to 1986 , February 1987, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
DOD/DOE, Report, Nuclear Weapons Surety: Annual Report to the President, June 22, 1990, Secret/Formerly Restricted Data;[view]
DOE, Report, Report to Congress: Assessment of the Safety of U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Related Nuclear Test Requirements, July 26, 1991, Unclassified;[view]
GAO, Report, Nuclear Weapons: Annual Assessment of the Safety, Performance, and Reliability of the Nation’s Stockpile, February 2, 2007, Unclassified;[view]
DOE, PPT Presentation, A Robust Approach to Nuclear Weapon Safety, 2011, Unclassified.[view]

[156].     Robert Jackson, Strike Force: The USAF in Britain Since 1948 (London: Robson Books, 1986), p. 110.

[157].     State Department, Letter, Millar to Collins, June 24, 1960, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Notes on JCAE Meeting 6 January 1961, January 6, 1961, Secret; USAF, Memorandum, Zuckert to Chief of Staff, October 12, 1961, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Johnson to Talbot, Dispersal of Nuclear Weapons to Turkey, April 6, 1962, Secret; State Department, Report, Bombs for Turkish Strike Aircraft, undated but circa 1963, Top Secret/RD; State Department, Steering Group on Implementing the Nassau Decisions: Minutes of Second Meeting Held January 3, 1963 at 5:00 p.m., January 3, 1963, Top Secret.

[158].     DOE, Letter, Bradbury and Schwartz to Starbird, January 5, 1961, Secret/Restricted Data. (DOE, Letter, Bradbury and Schwartz to Starbird, January 5, 1961, Secret/RD, DOE FOIA).

[159].     “Symington Finds Flaws in NATO’s Warhead Security; Greek Incident Hinted,” New York Times, November 23, 1970; S.R. Davis, “How Safe Are NATO Missiles? Greek A-Incident Surfaces,” Christian Science Monitor, December 8, 1970.

[160].     Cable, 231121Z, USCINCEUR to JCS et al., November 23, 1967, Secret/NOFORN, RG-59, Entry 5191 Cyprus Crisis Files 1967, Box 2, NA, CP.

[161].     DOD, Briefing Paper, Nuclear Weapons Security, September 14, 1976, Unclassified.; US Army, Report, [extract] Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe: 1945-1991, 2005, Unclassified.[view]

[162].     Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Second Annual Report to Congress, Development, Use and Control of Nuclear Energy for the Common Defense and Security and for Peaceful Purposes, 94th Congress, June 30, 1976, p. 30.

[163].     CIA, Memorandum, Post-NFIB Action on Nuclear Terrorism Papers, March 13, 1982, Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, Agenda for NSC Meeting on Nuclear Weapons Security, June 10, 1983, Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, NSPG Meeting on DOD Nuclear Weapons-Related Facilities, August 2, 1985, August 1, 1985, Secret/NOFORN;[view]
DOE, Letter, Hoover to Casey, September 23, 1985, Confidential;.

[164].     Senator J.O. Pastore, Security Review of Certain NATO Installations, Congressional Record, U.S. Senate, April 30, 1975, pp. 7184-7190.

[165].     “Cooling Off the Nukes,” Newsweek, August 12, 1974, p. 17; John W. Finney, “Cyprus Crisis Stirred U.S. to Protect Atom Weapons,” New York Times, September 9, 1974, p. 10; Leslie H. Gelb, “U.S. Weighs Status of Nuclear Warheads in Greece,” New York Times, September 11, 1974, p. 12; S.V. Roberts, “Greek See Worse Ties If U.S. Pulls Out A-Arms,” New York Times, September 12, 1974; Drew Middleton, “Could a U.S. Atom Bomb be Stolen?,” New York Times, September 22, 1974; John W. Finney, “U.S. Delaying Removal of Warheads,” New York Times, July 24, 1975.

[166].     White House, Memorandum of Conversation, Security of U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe, February 6, 1975, Secret/NODIS, National Security Adviser. Memoranda of Conversations. Box 9, File: February 6, 1975 - Ford, Senators Pastore and Baker, Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

[167].     Robert P. Grathwol and Donita M. Moorhus, Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe: 1945-1991 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History and Corps of Engineers, 2005), p. 283.

[168].     Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Second Annual Report to Congress, Development, Use and Control of Nuclear Energy for the Common Defense and Security and for Peaceful Purposes, 94th Congress, June 30, 1976, Unclassified, p. 30.

[169].     Robert P. Grathwol and Donita M. Moorhus, Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe: 1945-1991 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History and Corps of Engineers, 2005), pp. 287-291.

[170].     For the activation of AFTAC and the AEDS, see US Army, Memorandum, Long Range Detection of Atomic Explosions, July 11, 1947, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Long Range Detection of Atomic Explosions, September 16, 1947, Secret;[view]
AEC, Report, Progress by the Armed Forces in Setting Up an Organization for Detection of Atomic Explosions, October 22, 1947, Secret;[view]
MLC, Memorandum, Long Range Detection of Atomic Explosions, November 5, 1947;[view]
AEC, Report, Atomic Energy Commission - Military Liaison Committee: Minutes of Nineteenth Conference, November 19, 1947, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Long-Range Detection of Atomic Explosions, November 21, 1947, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Research and Development on Methods for Long Range Detection of Atomic Bomb Explosions, December 26, 1947, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, [extract] The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy: Volume II: 1947-1949, 1996, Unclassified.[view]

[171].     AEC, Memorandum, Strauss to Souers, September 23, 1949, Top Secret/Restricted Data; USAF, Report, History of Air Material Command Participation in the Atomic Energy Program: April - December 1951, April 1953, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Minutes, Forty-first Meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, July 12, 13, 14, and 15, 1954, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
USAF, Report, History of the Atomic Energy Detection System (AEDS): 1955, ca 1956, Secret;[view]
AEC, Report, A System for Detecting Atomic Tests at Long Range, October 17, 1956, Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Report, Detection of the First Soviet Nuclear Test on August 29, 1949, February 1962, Secret/Restricted Data; NSC, Memorandum, National Security Action Memorandum No. 174, July 21,1962, Top Secret; USAF, Testimony, Statement by D.L. Northrup for the Executive Session Hearing, 10:00 a.m., Friday., 23 August 1963, for the Committee on Foreign Relations, in Conjunction With the Committee on Armed Services and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, August 23, 1963, Top Secret; USAF, Report, History of the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC): 1 July - 31 December 1964, 1965, Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, Classification of Mission of AFTAC Stations, April 4, 1973, Secret;[view]
USAF, Report, History of the Air Force Technical Applications Center, Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, 1 January 1979 - 31 December 1980, May 17, 1982, Secret.

[172].     USAF, Memorandum, Aerial Reconnaissance for the Long Range Detection of Atomic Explosions, June 16, 1948, Top Secret;[view]
White House, Report, [draft report regarding Soviet nuclear test], undated but circa September 1949, Top Secret; CIA, Memorandum, Hillenkoetter to President, September 9, 1949, Top Secret Control/US Officials Only; USAF, Cable, AIRA London to HQ USAF, September 12, 1949, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, AIRA London to HQ USAF, September 13, 1949, Top Secret; USAF, Report, An Interim Report of British Work on Joe, September 22, 1949, Top Secret/Restricted Data;[view]
AEC, Memorandum, Strauss to Souers, September 23, 1949, Top Secret/Restricted Data; USAF, Cable, AWS Operating Center to CINCFE, January 8, 1950, Top Secret; USAF, Report, [extract] History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, January 1863, Secret/Restricted Data; CIA, Article, The Detection of JOE 1, Fall 1966, Secret.[view]

[173].     State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Brazzaville et al., February 5, 1964, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy Tehran to Secretary of State, March 12, 1964, Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Tokyo, July 21, 1964, Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Karachi, August 13, 1964, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Agreement for Special Military Facilities in Pakistan, August 14, 1964, Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Taipei et al., October 16, 1964, Secret; DOD, Letter, McNamara to Rusk, October 24, 1964, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, [Project CLEAR SKY]: Informal U.K. Draft Agreement, November 2, 1964, Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Seismic Arrays Project, November 12, 1964, Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Amembassy Buenos Aires to Secretary of State, November 3, 1965, Secret; DOD, Letter, Barber to Handley, December 1, 1965, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy London to Secretary of State, April 15, 1966, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Establishment of AEDS Facilities in India, May 17, 1966, Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy London, June 18, 1966, Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy London, June 20, 1966, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy London to Secretary of State, June 23, 1966, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy London to Secretary of State, October 18, 1966, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy Tehran to Secretary of State, February 13, 1967, Secret.

[174].     3400 Technical Training Wing, Study Guide and Workbook, Introduction to Detection Systems, October 18, 1984, For Official Use Only.

[175].     Headquarters, Air Force Technical Application Center (AFTAC), Center Instruction 38-101, Organization and Functions Chart Book, April 21, 1997, Secret, USAF FOIA.

[176].     DOD, Memorandum, Security Measures on Chemical Warfare and Biological Warfare, August 15, 1952, Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Security Measures on Chemical Warfare and Biological Warfare, September 3, 1952, Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, Psychological Warfare: Public Information Program on CBR Warfare, December 1952, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Problems for Presentation to General Taylor, November 6, 1958, Top Secret;[view]

[177].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Inquiries of Congressman Robert W. Kastanmaier, Wisconsin, Relative to Chemical and Biological Warfare Program, January 22, 1960, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, US Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs, February 25, 1977, Secret.[view]

[178].     This collection contains a number of excellent, well documented histories of America’s involvement in chemical warfare dating back to World War I, including US Army, Report, Military Law Review, July1960, Unclassified;[view]

[179].     Leo P. Brophy, Wyndham D. Miles and Raymond C. Cochrane, The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1959),.

[180].     Leo P. Brophy and George J.B. Fisher, The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1959), pp. 120-122.

[181].     National Park Service, Report, Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Commerce City, Adam County, Colorado, 1985, Unclassified, LOC.

[182].     US Army, A Century of Innovation: The Army’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland: 1917-2017, 2017, Unclassified, p. 25; Leo P. Brophy, Wydham Miles and Rexmond C. Cochrane, The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field (Washington , D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959), p. 74.

[183].                 JCS, Report, Theater Plans for Chemical Warfare, June 4, 1945, Top Secret.[view]
See also Brooks E. Kleber and Dale Birdsell, The Chemical Warfare Service: Chemicals in Combat (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1966).

[184].     The best documentary sources for the evolution of US chemical weapons policy from World War I to the late 1970s can be found in DOD, Memorandum, National Policy on CW, March 25, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, Military Law Review, July1960, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Thesis, What’s Wrong With Gas Warfare?, April 8, 1966, Unclassified;[view]
John L. Chamberlin, “The Origins and Evolution of United States Chemical Warfare Policy,” in SRI, Report, Evaluation of Chemical Warfare Policy Alternatives - 1980-1990, February 1977, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, National Policy, Goals and Objectives After Chemical Disarmament, April 2, 1990, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Article, History of Chemical and Biological Warfare: An American Perspective, 1997, Unclassified.[view]

[185].     Leo P. Brophy and George J.B. Fisher, The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959), p. 88; Frederic Brown, Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 264.

[186].     White House, Report, Discussion at the 435th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, February 18, 1960, February 18, 1960, Top Secret; DOD, Press Release, Memorandum for Correspondents, August 9, 1969, Unclassified;[view]
White House, Report, The President’s Talking Points - Congressional Leadership Meeting, November 25, 1969, Top Secret;[view]

White House, Report, HAK Talking Points - Briefings for Congressional Leadership and Press, November 25, 1969, Top Secret.[view]
See also Hugh Stringer, Deterring Chemical Warfare: U. S. Policy Options for the 1990s. (Washington: Pergamon Brassey's International Defense Publishers, 1986).

[187].     NSC, Report, NSC 62: Chemical Warfare Policy, February 1, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, NSC 62: Chemical Warfare Policy, February 2, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, National Policy on CW, March 25, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, Memorandum for All Holders of NSC 62 (“Chemical Warfare Policy”, Dated February 1, 1950), May 6, 1956, Confidential; US Army, Memorandum, National Policy on Use of CW and BW Agents, December 4, 1957, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, Technological Developments in Non-Lethal Weapons and Doctrine for Possible Use, February 16, 1960, Top Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Policy on Chemical and Biological Weapons, February 20, 1967, Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, HAK Talking Points, Review Group Meeting, NSSM 5- - US Policy on CW and BW, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents, May 28, 1969, Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, U.S. Policy, Programs and Issues on CBW, August 28, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, NSC Review Group Meeting: U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents (NSAM 59), October 30, 1969, Top Secret’ NSC, Report, NSSM 59 U.S. Policy on CW-BW: Analytical Summary, November 10, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, US Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare, November 17, 1969, Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, Minutes of NSC Meeting on Chemical Warfare and Biological Warfare, November 18, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, United States Policy on Chemical Warfare Program and Bacteriological/Biological Research Program, November 25, 1969, Top Secret.[view]

[188].     DOD, Report, Report of the Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare, June 30, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, Comments on the Report of the Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Warfare (Stevenson Committee), August 22, 1950, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Concept for Employment of Toxic Chemical Agents, June 27, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, BW Policy, December 19, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
DOD, Directive, Chemical and Biological Warfare Readiness, December 21, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, Use of CW and BW in Retaliation Only, February 4, 1952;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Meeting on BW and CW, 11 February 1952, February 13, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[189].     NSC, Memorandum, NSSM 192: Chemical Weapons Policy, February 7, 1974, Top Secret, RNL.

[190].     USAF, Report, Staff Study: BW-CW Program in USAF, June 11, 1951, Top Secret.[view]

[191].     JCS, Report, Concept for Employment of Toxic Chemical Agents, June 27, 1951, Top Secret.[view]

[192].     CIA, Estimate, The Possibility of Soviet Employment of BW and CW in the Event of Attacks Upon the US, January 10, 1951, Top Secret.[view]

[193].     USAF, Report, Staff Study: BW-CW Program in USAF, June 11, 1951, Top Secret.[view]

[194].     USAF, Memorandum, Tests of Bombs for the Dissemination of GB and HD, December 21, 1951, Secret.[view]

[195].     CIA, Memorandum, Memorandum Report for the Secretary of National Defense, May 28, 1948, Top Secret.

[196].     USAF, Memorandum, Army Air Forces Chemical Warfare Policy, 1946, Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Minutes of Meeting of the Research Council of the Chemical Corps Board, March 3, 1947, Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Presentation to the Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on CEBAR, February 24, 1950, Top Secret.[view]

[197].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret.

[198].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret.

[199].     DOD, Report of the Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare, June 30, 1950, Secret.

[200].     US Army, Report, Minutes of Meeting of the Research Council of the Chemical Corps Board, March 3, 1947, Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Chemical and Biological Warfare Organization, Equipment and Training Status, March 1, 1951, Top Secret.[view]

[201].     Jeffrey K. Smart, History of Chemical and Biological Warfare: An American Perspective, in Frederick R. Sidell, Ernest T. Takafuji, and David R. Franz (eds.), Textbook of Military Medicine: Wafare, Weaponry, and Casualty: Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Washington, D.C.: The Borden Institute, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 1997), p. 46.

[202].     DOD, Report of the Secretary of Defense’s Ad hoc Committee on Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare, June 30, 1950, Secret.

[203].     UK Joint Intelligence Committee, JIC 156/11/D cited in Reid Kirby, “Nerve Gas: America’s Fifteen-Year Struggle for Modern Chemical Weapons,” Army Chemical Review, January - June 2006, pp. 42-44.

[204].     US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Chemical Warfare - Biological Warfare - Radiological Warfare, August 4, 1952, Secret.[view]

[205].     DOD, Memorandum, The Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical, Biologicl and Radiological Warfare, October 27, 1950, Top Secret, NARA; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret, p. 10, CMH; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of Chemical Corps Activities: 9 September 1951 - 31 December 1952, February 1953, Secret, p. 2, CMH; US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Personnel Spaces for Classified Facilities, February 18, 1953, Secret, NARA.[view]

[206].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret, p. 10, CMH.

[207].     For the German discovery of sarin and their ‘weaponization’ of the nerve agent, see UK War Office, Report, [extract] Special Weapons and Types of Warfare: Vol. I - Gas Warfare, 1951, Secret.[view]

[208].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Projects GIBBET (Conf) and NOODLE (Conf), January 17, 1952, Secret, NARA.[view]

[209].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret, p. 14, CMH; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of Chemical Corps Activities: 9 September 1951 to 31 December 1952, February 1953, Secret, p. 14, CMH; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1953, September 4, 1953, Secret, p. 23, CMH.

[210].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Project GIBBET (Conf), January 29, 1952, Secret, NARA;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Additional GB Production and Munitions Loading Capacity, May 19, 1952, Secret, NARA;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Personnel Spaces for Classified Facilities, February 18, 1953, Secret, NARA;[view]
Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1953, September 4, 1953, Secret, pp. 19, 64, CMH; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1954, September 1954, Secret/RD, pp. 107-108, CMH.

[211].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Program of Production - GB and GB Filled Munitions, June 26, 1952, Secret, NARA.[view]

[212].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret, p. 14, CMH; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1955, December 1955, Secret/RD, p. 51, CMH; Jeffrey K. Smart, History of Chemical and Biological Warfare: An American Perspective, in Frederick R. Sidell, Ernest T. Takafuji, and David R. Franz (eds.), Textbook of Military Medicine: Wafare, Weaponry, and Casualty: Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Washington, D.C.: The Borden Institute, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 1997), p. 49.

[213].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1959, January 1960, Secret, pp. 112-114, CMH.

[214].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Status of Ordnance Corps Development of GB Shell, March 3, 1952, Secret, NARA;[view]
Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of Chemical Corps Activities: 9 September 1951 to 31 December 1952, February 1953, Secret, p. 14, CMH; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1953, September 4, 1953, Secret, pp. 23-24, CMH.

[215].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1955, December 1955, Secret/RD, p. 142, CMH.

[216].     A.R. Hylton, The History of Chemical Warfare Plants and Facilities in the United States (Washington, D.C.: US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA)/Midwest Research Institute, 1972), Unclassified, Vol. IV, pp. 59-75.

[217].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Annex to Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1954, September 1954, Top Secret, p. 3, CMH; Cable, DA 966835, G3 DA to CINCFE, August 27, 1954, Top Secret, RG-341, Entry 23 (NM-15) Staff Message Division, Top Secret Incoming and Outgoing Messages 1947-1959, Box 81, NA, CP.

[218].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1955, December 1955, Secret/RD, pp. 44-46, CMH.

[219].     Memorandum, Gibbons to Chief Chemical Officer, Production Development Laboratories, March 13, 1957, Top Secret, RG-319, Entry 68 (A1) DCS/Operations TS Correspondence 1956-1962, Box 30, NA, CP.

[220].     Jeffrey K. Smart, History of Chemical and Biological Warfare: An American Perspective, in Frederick R. Sidell, Ernest T. Takafuji, and David R. Franz (eds.), Textbook of Military Medicine: Wafare, Weaponry, and Casualty: Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Washington, D.C.: The Borden Institute, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 1997), p. 49.

[221].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1956, November 1956, Secret/RD, pp. 130-131, CMH; US Army Chemical Corps Historical Office, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: Fiscal Year 1957, October 1957, Secret, pp. 93-95, CMH; US Army Chemical Corps Historical Office, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: Fiscal Year 1958, March 1959, Secret, p. 97, CMH.

[222].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: Fiscal Year 1958, March 1959, Secret, pp. 156-158, CMH.

[223].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1959, January 1960, Secret, p. 94, CMH.

[224].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1958, March 1959, Secret, pp. 99-100, CMH.

[225].     JCS, Report, Chemical and Biological Warfare, May 31, 1960, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, [extract] Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1960, April 1961, Secret.

[226].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1961-1962, June 1962, Secret, pp. 6, 9, CMH.

[227].     DOD, Memorandum, Evaluation of the Mustard Weapon System, January 22, 1962, Secret; U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1961-1962, June 1962, Secret, pp. 9-11, CMH.

[228].     JCS, Memorandum, Biological and Chemical Weapons and Defense Programs, February 14, 1962, Top Secret; U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1961-1962, June 1962, Secret, p. 135, CMH; DOD, Memorandum, Plans for the Development of Biological and Chemical Weapons and Defense Capabilities, July 16, 1962, Top Secret; JCS, Memorandum, Action to Improve CBR Capability, December 31, 1962, Top Secret.

[229].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1961-1962, June 1962, Secret, p. 155, CMH.

[230].     SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare (New York: Humanities Press, 1972), Vol. II, pp. 82-89.

[231].     DOD, Memorandum, Laird to Kissinger, April 30, 1969, Confidential; NSC, Memorandum, Memorandum to Secretary Laird on CBW Study, May 7, 1969, Confidential;[view]

NSC, Memorandum, CBW Study, May 9, 1969, Confidential;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents, May 28, 1969, Secret.[view]

[232].     State Department, Memorandum, National Academy Report on Disposal of Chemical Munitions - Action Memorandum, June 27, 1969, FOUO; State Department, Memorandum, Proposal to Dispose of CW Chemicals in the North Atlantic, August 8, 1969, FOUO.

[233].     CIA, Memorandum, Nerve Gas Incident on Okinawa, July 18, 1969, Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Amembassy Tokyo to Secretary of State, July 19, 1969, Secret; State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Tokyo, July 19, 1969, Secret; State Department, Cable, Amembassy Tokyo to Secretary of State, July 25, 1969, Confidential; State Department, Memorandum, Okinawa/Japan: Nerve Gas Incident Causes Furor, July 25, 1969, Confidential/NOFORN;[view]
State Department, Cable, Secretary of State to Amembassy Dkakarta, July 27, 1969, Confidential.

[234].     NSC, Memorandum, U.S. Policy, Programs and Issues on CBW, August 28, 1969, Top Secret/Eyes Only; NSC, Report, US Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents, November 10, 1969, Top Secret; Letter, Doyle to McRae, January 23, 1973, Top Secret.

[235].     White House, Memorandum, Memorandum for Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, October 22, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, NSC Review Group Meeting: U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents (NSAM 59), October 30, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents (NSAM 59), November 10, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, NSSM 59 U.S. Policy on CW-BW: Analytical Summary, November 10, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, US Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare, November 17, 1969, Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, Minutes of NSC Meeting on Chemical Warfare and Biological Warfare, November 18, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, United States Policy on Chemical Warfare Program and Bacteriological/Biological Research Program, November 25, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
White House, Report, The President’s Talking Points - Congressional Leadership Meeting, November 25, 1969, Top Secret;[view]
White House, Report, HAK Talking Points - Briefings for Congressional Leadership and Press, November 25, 1969.[view]

[236].     The battle waged by the Pentagon in its effort to build binary chemical weapons was a long and bitter one, for which see Memorandum, Deputy Secretary of State to President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, A Proposed Initiative on Chemical Weapons Limitations (NSSM 157), November 12, 1973, Secret, FRUS; Action Memorandum, Director of the Bureau of Politico Military Affairs to Deputy Secretary of State, NSSM 157 (Review of United States Position on Chemical Weapons Prohibitions), November 26, 1973, Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, Deputy Secretary of State to President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, NSSM 157 (Review of United States Position on Chemical Weapons Prohibition), November 28, 1973, Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, Guhin/National Security Council Staff to President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs, Activities Regarding Chemical Weapons Issues, May 17, 1974, Secret, FRUS; NSC, Report, NSSM 192 Report: United States Chemical Weapons Posture, Top Secret, August 31, 1974, FRUS; Minutes of a Senior Review Group Meeting, Chemical Weapons Policy (NSSM 192), January 27, 1975, Top Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Chemical Weapons (CW), December 15, 1976, Secret, FRUS; National Security Council, Report, Background Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Chemical Weapons Working Group for the SRG on Acquisition of a Binary CW Munition Facility, December 29, 1976, Secret, FRUS, Memorandum, President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs and President’s Assistant for Management and Budget to President Ford, Binary Chemical Weapons Production Facility, January 3, 1977, Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Carter, Chemical Warfare, June 13, 1977, Secret, FRUS; Letter, Secretary of State Vance to Secretary of Defense Brown, October 23, 1977, Secret, FRUS; Letter, Secretary of Defense Brown to Secretary Vance, November 22, 1977, Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, Tuchman Mathews and Denend to President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs and Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs, SCC Meeting on PRM–37 - Chemical Weapons, November 30, 1978, Secret, FRUS; Minutes of a Special Coordination Committee Meeting, Chemical Weapons, December 1, 1978, Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, Secretary of Defense to President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Binary Chemical Munitions Facility, October 4, 1979, Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) to President Carter, SCC Meeting on Chemical Weapons, December 14, 1978, Secret, FRUS; Memorandum, JCS to Secretary of Defense, US Chemical Warfare Policy and Retaliatory Capability, July 15, 1980, Secret, FRUS; Summary of Conclusions of a Mini SCC Meeting, Chemical Warfare, November 26, 1980, Secret, FRUS.[view]

[237].     Memorandum, Tuchman Matthews and Denend to Brzezinski and The President, SCC Meeting on PRM 37 - Chemical Weapons, November 30, 1978, Secret, National Security Council, Institutional Files, Box 100, SCC 170, Chemical Weapons, 12/1/78, Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, Georgia/FRUS.

[238].     GAO, Report, Chemical Munitions: Cost Estimates for Demilitarization and Production, October 1985, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, US-Soviet Dialogue on CW Nonproliferation, December 20, 1985, Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, US-Soviet Dialogue on the Proliferation of Chemical Weapons, October 13, 1986, Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, Schultz to Weinberger, October 30, 1986, Secret; US Army, Report, [extract] US Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command: Annual Historical Review FY 1986, June 1987, Unclassified.[view]

[239].     White House, Press Release, White House Announcement on Binary Chemical Weapons Modernization, October 16, 1987, Unclassified, Ronald Reagan Library.

[240].     GAO, Report, Chemical Weapons: Status of the Army’s M687 Binary Program, September 1990, Unclassified;[view]
David C. Morrison,"Chemical Arms Aren't Easy to Destroy." National Journal, June 1992, pp. 2068 2069.

[241].     GAO, Report, BIGEYE Bomb: Evaluation of Operational Tests, August 1989, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, Report, Arms Control Briefing Book for Secretary of Defense Visit to European Capitals: 21-31 October 1989, October 19, 1989, Secret/NOFORN; DOD, Report, Implications for Change in Chemical Warfare Deterrence Strategy, Force Structure, or Force Deployments Required by a Reduced CW Retaliatory Capability, November 3, 1989, Secret/NOFORN;[view]
DOD, Report, Report on Plans for Modernizing a Substantially Reduced Binary Stockpile, November 7, 1989, Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] US Army Material Command Annual Historical Review FY 1988, June 1990, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] US Army Material Command Annual Historical Review FY 1989, March 1991, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] Looking Between Trinity and the Wall: Army Material Command Cold War Material Culture Within the Continental United States: 1945-1989, May 1997, Unclassified.[view]

[242].     For detailed descriptions of the different chemical agents manufactured by the US Army during the Cold War era, see US Army, Field Manual, Employment of Chemical and Biological Agents, March 1966, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, Lethal Toxic Chemical Agents and Munitions Stockpile Reliability Assessment, January 7, 1983, Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program: Chemical Agent and Munition Disposal - Summary of the U.S. Army’s Experience , September 21, 1987, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program: Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, January 1988, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, Old Chemical Weapons: Munitions Specification Report, September 1994, Unclassified;[view]
DOD, Report, Technology Resource Document for the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment Environmental Impact Statement: Volume 1: Overview of the ACWA Program and Appendices A-E, May 2001, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, Physical Property Data Review of Selected Chemical Agents and Related Compounds: Updating Field Manual 3-9 (FM 3-9), September 2003, Unclassified;[view]
National Academies, Report, Health Effects of Project SHAD Chemical Agent: Sarin Nerve Agent, 2004, Unclassified.[view]

[243].     For detailed descriptions of all the different chemical agents and munitions manufactured by the U.S. Army during the Cold War era, see the following: US Army, Report, [extract] Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program: Chemical Agent and Munition Disposal - Summary of the U.S. Army’s Experience , September 21, 1987, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program: Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, January 1988, Unclassified;[view]
U.S. Army Chemical Destruction Agency, Old Chemical Weapons: Munitions Specification Report, September 1994, FOUO; DOD, Report, Technology Resource Document for the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment Environmental Impact Statement: Volume 1: Overview of the ACWA Program and Appendices A-E, May 2001, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, Physical Property Data Review of Selected Agents and Related Compounds: Updating Field Manual 3-9 (FM 3-9), September 2003, Unclassified.

[244].     Unless otherwise stated, the information contained in this section came from US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Arsenal Brochure, October 13, 1960, Secret;[view]
ACDA, Report, [extract] The History of Chemical Warfare Plants and Facilities in the United States, November 13, 1972, no classification markings;[view]

[245].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Utilization of Installations, December 16, 1952, Secret;[view]
NPS, Report, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Aberdeen Proving Ground (Edgewood Arsenal), Aberdeen, Maryland, 1985, Unclassified;[view]
MHT, Report, Maryland Historical Trust NR-Eligibility Review: US Army Ordnance Assembly Plant, Edgewood Area, Aberdeen Proving Ground, September 1, 2004, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, A Century of Innovation: The Army’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland: 1917-2017, 2017, Unclassified.[view]

[246].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1958, March 1959, Secret, pp. 156-158, CMH; National Park Service, Historic Properties Report: Newport Army Ammunition Plant, Newport, Indiana, August 1984, Unclassified, LOC.[view]

[247].     NPS, Report, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Pine Bluff Arsenal, Pine Bluff, Arsenal, 1985, Unclassified.[view]

[248].     USAF, Memorandum, Production Facilities for Chemical and Biological Agents, October 10, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Priority for Chemical and Biological Warfare Facilities, February 25, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Priority for Chemical and Biological Warfare Facilities, February 29, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1953, September 4, 1953, Secret;[view]
Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems [Uniteed States Chemical Corps]: FY 1955, December 1955, Secret; U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, U.S. Army Chemical Corps: FY 1958, March 1959, Secret; US Army, Report, History of Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Commerce City, Colorado, May 1980, Unclassified;[view]
NPS, Report, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Commerce City, Colorado, 1985, Unclassified;[view]

[249].     U.S. Army, History of Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Commerce City, Colorado, May 1980, Unclassified, U.S. Army.

[250].     Lee Davidson, “State Says Army Failed to Get OKs for Open-Air Dugway Tests,” Deseret News, May 18, 1988; Lee Davidson, “Lethal Breeze,” Deseret News, June 5, 1994; Lee Davidson, “Weapons-Testing Documents Listed,” Deseret News, December 22, 1994. For declassified reports concerning the secret tests at the Dugway Proving Ground of radioactive weapons, see US Army, Report, Test of Spherical Weapons, May 15, 1953, Confidential/Restricted Data; US Army, Report, 2nd Static Test of Sectional Munitions, September 18, 1953, Secret/Restricted Data. See also Lee Davidson, “Secret Tests Released Radiation at Dugway,” Deseret News, December 15, 1993.

[251].     US Army, Report, [extract] Major International R&D Ranges and Test Facilities: Summary of Capabilities, June 1991, Unclassified.

[252].     DOD, Memorandum, FY 1951 Facility Proposal WO31, CEBAR Proving Establishment, August 26, 1949, Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, BW-CW Testing Program, November 29, 1951, Secret;[view]
NPS, Report, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Dugway Proving Ground, Dugway, Utah, 1985, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] Major International R&D Ranges and Test Facilities: Summary of Capabilities, 1990, Unclassified;[view]
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Report, Final Report of the Comprehensive Document Review for the Dugway Proving Ground, September 19, 1995, Unclassified; US Army, Report, [extract] Looking Between Trinity and the Wall: Army Material Command Cold War Material Culture Within the Continental United States: 1945-1989, May 1997, Unclassified.[view]
See also Lee Davidson and Joe Bauman, “Toxic Utah: A Land Littered With Poisons,” Deseret News, February 12, 2001.

[253].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret, p. 16, CMH.

[254].     Department of State/Department of Defense, Phase I Data PERTAINING TO THE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA REGARDING THE. BILATERAL VERIFICATION EXPERIMENT AND DATA EXCHANGE RELATED TO PROHIBITION OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS SIGNED 23 SEPTEMBER 1989, undated but circa 1990, Secret (Rel USSR), DOD FOIA.

[255].     US Army, Article, Last VX Nerve Agent in CMA Stockpile Destroyed, Summer 2009, Unclassified.[view]

[256].     National Park Service, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Tooele Army Depot, Tooele, Utah, 1985, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Chemical Depots, OSD BRAC Clearinghouse #C0680, August 18, 2005, Unclassified; US Army, Article, A Town Called “Deseret”, Winter 2011, Unclassified;[view]
US Army, Report, [extract] Tooele Transcript Bulletin, January 19, 2012, Unclassified          .

[257].     US Army, Memorandum, Chemical Depots, OSD BRAC Clearinghouse #C0680, August 18, 2005, Unclassified.

[258].     US Army, Letter, Ridgway to MacArthur, January 6, 1951, Top Secret/Personal For; US Army, Cable, CINCFE to CG ARMY EIGHT, January 18, 1951, Top Secret/Personal For.

[259].     JCS, Letter, Bradley to Ridgway, September 11,1952, Top Secret; US Army, Report, Commanders’ Conference, October 2,1952, Top Secret; State Department, Report, Substance of Discussions of State - Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, March 27, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, SACEUR’s Interim Requirements for Toxic Chemical Munitions, September 14, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, SACEUR’s Interim Requirements for Toxic Chemical Munitions, September 27, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, SACEUR’s Interim Requirements for Toxic Chemical Munitions, September 29, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, SACEUR’s Interim Requirements for Toxic Chemical Munitions, October 4, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, SACEUR’s Interim Requirements for Toxic Chemical Munitions, October 5, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, SACEUR’s Interim Requirements for Toxic Chemical Munitions, October 5, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Summary Report - Tripartite Staff Conference on SACEUR’s Interim Requirements for Toxic Chemical Munitions, February 24, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, SHAPE Chemical Warfare Requirements, June 13, 1955, Top Secret;[view]

[260].     USAF, Cable, COM AMC to CINCUSAFE and COM FEAF, September 26, 1956, Top Secret.

[261].     White House, Report, Staff Notes No. 405, August 13, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
U.S. Army, Index Card, Shipment of Toxic Chemical Munitions to Germany, August 21, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Biological and Chemical Capability, August 31, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Problems for Presentation to General Taylor, November 6, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Biological and Chemical Capability, August 31, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Negotiations for Storage Rights in USEUCOM, December 17, 1962, Top Secret; JCS, Memorandum, Action to Improve CBR Capability, December 31, 1962, Top Secret.

[262].     William R. Brankowitz, Chemical Weapons Movement History Compilation (U.S. Army, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland: Office of the Program Manager for Chemical Munitions, April 27, 1987), Unclassified.

[263].     NSC, Memorandum, U.S. Policy, Programs and Issues on CBW, August 28, 1969, Top Secret/Eyes Only.

[264].     USAREUR, Change Sheet to USAREUR OPLAN, April 22, 1971, Top Secret;[view]
Memorandum, Guhin to Haig, Unserviceable Chemical Munitions in Germany, June 9, 1971, Top Secret/Sensitive;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Movement of Chemical Weapons from the FRG and Johnston Island, January 14, 1972, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Movement of Chemical Weapons from the FRG and Johnston Island, January 26, 1972, Top Secret;[view]
State Department, Cable, Amembassy Bonn to Secretary of State, February 18, 1972, Top Secret.

[265].     U.S. General Accounting Office, Chemical Warfare: DODs Successful Effort to Remove U.S. Chemical Weapons From Germany, February 1991, Unclassified;[view]

[266].     USAF, Memorandum, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Agents, March 1, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical Agents, May 19, 1952, Top Secret.[view]

[267].     US Army, Report, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical Agents, June 1952, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Cable, DEPTAR to CINCFE, July 24, 1952, Top Secret; JCS, Memorandum, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical Agents, August 22, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical Agents, August 25, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Cable, JCS to CINCFE, September 12, 1952, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, HQ USAF to CG AMC, October 2, 1952, Top Secret; US Army, Memorandum, Shipment of Chemical Munitions, October 2, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Cable, DEPTAR to CINCFE, October 9, 1952, Top Secret; USAF, Cable, CG AMC to HQ USAF, October 13, 1952, Top Secret; US Army, Cable, CINCFE to DEPTAR, October 15, 1952, Top Secret; US Army, Cable, CINCFE to CG AFFE, October 15, 1952, Top Secret.

[268].     US Army, Cable, CGAFFE to DEPTAR, November 14, 1953, Top Secret; JCS, Memorandum, Shipment of Chemical Warfare Munitions to the Far East, May 25, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Memorandum, Shipment of Chemical Warfare Munitions to the Far East, July 8, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Cable, CINCFE to DEPTAR, January 6, 1955, Top Secret; US Army, Cable, DEPTAR to CINCFE, January 25, 1955, Top Secret.

[269].     Memorandum, ASD(SA) to SecDef, 19 Jul 1969, folder Okinawa 1–5, box 5, Laird Papers, Gerald R. Ford Library, cited in Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post Vietnam Military, 1969 1973 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2016), p. 336. See also 267th Chemical Company, Organizational History - 267th Chemical Company, March 26, 1966, Unclassified, US Army Chemical Corps Museum, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

[270].     William R. Brankowitz, Chemical Weapons Movement History Compilation (U.S. Army, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland: Office of the Program Manager for Chemical Munitions, April 27, 1987), Unclassified.

[271].     US Army, Letter, Beal to Rogers, December 1, 1969, Secret; State Department, Memorandum, Okinawa Chemical Munitions - Action Memorandum, June 19, 1970, Secret;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Transfer of Nerve Gas and Chemical Weapons to Guam - Action Memorandum, June 24, 1970, Confidential;[view]
White House, Memorandum, Shipment of Chemical Munitions from Okinawa, September 11, 1970, Secret/Eyes Only;[view]
State Department, Memorandum, Operation Red Hat - Transfer of Chemical Munitions from Okinawa to Johnston Island - Action Memorandum, December 3, 1970, Secret;[view]
State Department, Letter, Secretary of State to McCormack, December 4, 1970, Secret. See also Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2016), p. 337.

[272].     Glenn B. Infield, Disaster at Bari (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1971).

[273].     US Army, Report, Meeting Notes: Summary of Some Chemical Munitions Sea Dumps by the United States, January 30, 1989, Unclassified.[view]

[274].     Sharon Reutter, “Hazards of Chemical Weapons Release During War: New Perspectives,” Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 107, No. 12, December 1999, Unclassified, NIH.

[275].     Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2016), p. 337; “Okinawa Nerve Gas Not Going to Oregon,” Japan Times, May 25, 1970; “U.S. Completes Gas Transfer,” Japan Times, September 10, 1971.

[276].     The archival records concerning the U.S. Army’s biological weapons program during World War II are, to put it mildly, skimpy. See Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the US Biological Warfare Program,” in Susan Wright (ed.), Preventing a Biological Arms Race (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9. See also US Army, Article, Using the Flea As a Weapon, July-December 2005, Unclassified.[view]

[277].     Office of the Chief, U.S. Army Chemical Corps, History of the Chemical Warfare Service in World War II: 1 July 1940 - 15 August 1945, November 1947, Top Secret, Vol. II Biological Warfare Research in the United States, p. 97.

[278].     Office of the Chief, U.S. Army Chemical Corps, History of the Chemical Warfare Service in World War II: 1 July 1940 - 15 August 1945, November 1947, Top Secret, Vol. II Biological Warfare Research in the United States, pp. 100-101, 271, DTIC.

[279].     Office of the Chief, U.S. Army Chemical Corps, History of the Chemical Warfare Service in World War II: 1 July 1940 - 15 August 1945, November 1947, Top Secret, Vol. II Biological Warfare Research in the United States, p. 543, DTIC.

[280].     Office of the Chief, U.S. Army Chemical Corps, History of the Chemical Warfare Service in World War II: 1 July 1940 - 15 August 1945, November 1947, Top Secret, Vol. II Biological Warfare Research in the United States, p. 546, DTIC.

[281].     US Army, Report, Biological Warfare, January 3, 1946, Unclassified (later reclassified Top Secret).

[282].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Seventh Annual Report of the Chemical Corps Biological Laboratories (Fiscal Year 1953), July 1, 1953, Secret, pp. 84-90, U.S. Army; Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret of Chemical and Biological Warfare. (New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1982).

[283].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Seventh Annual Report of the Chemical Corps Biological Laboratories (Fiscal Year 1953), July 1, 1953, Secret, U.S. Army.

[284].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of the Chemical Corps: 25 June 1950 - 8 September 1951, October 30, 1951, Top Secret, p. 13, CMH; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of Chemical Corps Activities: 9 September 1951 to 31 December 1952, February 1953, Secret, p. 13, CMH.

[285].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Proposed Dept of the Army Research Lab at Fort Terry (Plum Island), New York, June 23, 1952, Secret, NARA; Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary History of Chemical Corps Activities: 9 September 1951 to 31 December 1952, February 1953, Secret, p. 16, CMH.

[286].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1953, September 4, 1953, Secret, p. 28, CMH.

[287].     National Park Service, Report, Historic Properties Report: Pine Bluff Arsenal, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, August 1984, Unclassified, DTIC.

[288].     Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1954, September 1954, Secret, p. 10, CMH.

[289].     USAF, Memorandum, Status of Anthrax, May 28, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Inter-Service Coordinating Committee, June 9, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Memorandum for Record, May 28, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Annex to Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1954, September 1954, Top Secret;.

[290].     US Army, Memorandum, Chemical and Biological Warfare, June 23, 1954, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, ARDC Project No. 5142, Anti-Crop BW Munitions, August 23, 1954, Secret;[view]
Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, Annex to Summary of Major Events and Problems: FY 1954, September 1954, Top Secret; US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Chemical and Biological Warfare, June 20, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, Status of the BW Program, April 23, 1956, Top Secret.[view]

[291].     DOD, Memorandum, WSEG Report on BW, July 23, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Biological Warfare, February 24, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1958, March 1959, Secret; U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems: Fiscal Year 1959, January 1960, Secret;[view]
MHT, Report, Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties: Building 470, National Cancer Institute - Frederick, Fort Detrick, July 25, 2002, Unclassified.[view]

[292].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Chemical and Biological Warfare, June 20, 1955, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, Status of the BW Program, April 23, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, RD 105-58 - Biological Warfare Operations, June 11, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Memorandum, Chemical (Toxic) and Biological Warfare Readiness, October 26, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, Review of Bacteriological and Chemical Warfare Planning, July 9, 1958, Top Secret;[view]
JCS, Report, Chemical and Biological Warfare Readiness, August 11, 1959, Top Secret;[view]
US Army Chemical Corps, Report, Biological and Chemical Capability, August 31, 1959, Top Secret.[view]

[293].     JCS, Memorandum, WSEG Report No. 31, “A Reappraisal of Biological Warfare”, September 16, 1958, Top Secret.[view]

[294].     U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Army Chemical Corps: FY 1961-1962, June 1962, Secret, pp. 136, 155, CMH.

[295].     US Army, Report, Review of Bacteriological and Chemical Warfare Planning, July 9, 1958, Top Secret.[view]

[296].     US Army Chemical Corps, Memorandum, Biological Warfare, February 24, 1959, Top Secret.[view]

[297].     U.S. Army, US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Program, February 24, 1977, Secret, US Army FOIA.

[298].     DOD, Memorandum, National Security Decision Memoranda 35 and 44, July 6, 1970, Secret.[view]

[299].     NSC, Memorandum, Request for Defense’s Recommendations re Destruction of Biological Weapons and Transfer of Biological Facilities, June 2, 1970, Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, National Security Decision Memoranda 35 and 44, July 6, 1970, Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, Further Explanation of Proposed Review re Necessity of Classified Biological Research Program, July 17, 1970, Secret/Sensitive;[view]
NSC, Report, Annual Review of the United States Chemical Warfare and Biological Research Programs as of 1 November 1970, November 1, 1970, Top Secret;[view]
NSC, Report, Annual Review of US Chemical Warfare and Biological Research Program, February 4, 1971, Secret;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, Annual Review of the U.S. Chemical Warfare and Biological Research Program, January 25, 1973, Top Secret;[view]
CIA, Memorandum, CIA Activities at Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland, May 20, 1975, Secret/Sensitive;[view]
US Congress, Hearings, Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents, September 16, 17 and 18, 1975, Unclassified;[view]
NSC, Memorandum, Transfer of CIA’s Stock of Shellfish Toxin to the NIH, September 18, 1975, Confidential;[view]
US Army, Report, US Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs, February 25, 1977, Secret;[view]
NPS, Report, Historic Properties Report: Pine Bluff Arsenal, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, August 1984, Unclassified;[view]
MHT, Report, Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties: Building 470, National Cancer Institute - Frederick, Fort Detrick, July 25, 2002, Unclassified.[view]

[300].     For a good general treatment of the environmental legacies left by the US nuclear weapons production complex, see DOE, Report, Linking Legacies: Connecting the Cold War Nuclear Weapons Production Processes to Their Environmental Consequences, January 1997, Unclassified.[view]
For the Dugway Proving Ground, see US Army, Report, US Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs, February 25, 1977, Secret;[view]
NPS, Report, Written Historical and Descriptive Data: Dugway Proving Ground, Dugway, Utah, 1985, Unclassified.[view]
For the health effects of these weapons, see DNA, Fact Sheet, Operation IVY, February 17, 1983, Unclassified;[view]
National Academies, Report, Health Effects of Project SHAD Chemical Agent: Sarin Nerve Agent, 2004, Unclassified;[view]
GAO, Report, Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Needs to Continue to Collect and Provide Information on Tests and Potentially Exposed Personnel, May 2004, Unclassified;[view]
ORAU, Report, Technical Basis Document for Atomic Energy Operations at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant (IAAP), March 14, 2005, Unclassified;[view]
NIOSH, Report, Pantex Plant Site Expert Interview Summary, July 2011, Unclassified;[view]
ORAU, Report, SEC Petition Evaluation Report: Clarksville Modification Center, Ft. Campbell, May 31, 2012, Unclassified;[view]
USAF, Report, Consultative Letter AFRL-SA-WP-CL-2013-0004, Weapons Storage Are of 400 Series Buildings at Medina Annex, San Antonio, Texas, June 3, 2013, Unclassified;[view]

[301].     State Department, Memorandum, National Academy Report on Disposal of Chemical Munitions - Action Memorandum, June 27, 1969, FOUO; State Department, Memorandum, Proposal to Dispose of CW Chemicals in the North Atlantic, August 8, 1969, FOUO; State Department, Secretary of State to Amembassy Bonn, August 8, 1970, Confidential; US Army, Report, Meeting Notes: Summary of Some Chemical Munitions Sea Dumps by the United States, January 30, 1989, Unclassified.[view]

[302].     DOD, Report, Anti-Personnel BW Agents, August 22, 1949, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Report of the Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare, Implementing Actions and Progress, November 13, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Conference With the Secretary of the Air Force and the Secretary of the Army on BW-CW Matters, December 29, 1951, Top Secret;[view]
DOD, Memorandum, Use of Human Volunteers in Experimental Research, December 24, 1952, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, The Use of Human Volunteers in Experimental Research, January 7, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
USAF, Memorandum, Briefing for General Yates, April 27, 1953, Top Secret;[view]
US Army, Report, Status of the BW Program, April 23, 1956, Top Secret;[view]
CRS, Report, Chemical and Biological Warfare: Issues and Developments During 1976 and January 1 - June 30, 1977, July 1, 1977, Unclassified;[view]
GAO, Report, Human Experimentation: An Overview on Cold War Era Programs, September 28, 1994, Unclassified;[view]
GAO, Report, Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Needs to Continue to Collect and Provide Information on Tests and Potentially Exposed Personnel, May 2004, Unclassified.[view]

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Books

Roger M. Anders (ed.), Forging the Atomic Shield: Excerpts from the Office Diary of Gordon E. Dean (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1987)

Harry R. Borowski, Hollow Threat: Strategic Air Power and Containment before Korea (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. 1982)

Simon W. Duke and Wolfgang Krieger (eds.), U.S. Military Forces in Europe: The Early Years, 1945-1970 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993)

Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper, 1962; reprint, Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1983)

Chuck Hansen, U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History (Arlington, TX: Aerofax, 1988)

Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 2: Atomic Shield, 1947 1952 (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1969)

Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan, The Army and the Atomic Bomb (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1985)

Ann Arnold Lemert, First You Take a Pick & Shovel: The Story of the Mason Companies (Lexington, Kentucky: The John Bradford Press, 1979)

Phillip S. Meilinger, Hoyt S. Vandenberg: The Life of a General (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989)

Walton S. Moody, Building a Strategic Air Force (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1995)

Kenneth D. Nichols, The Road to Trinity (New York: William Morrow, 1987)

Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995)

Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)

Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (NY: Penguin Books, 2014)

Stephen I. Schwartz (ed.), Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington D.C.: Brookins Institution Press, 1998)

Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, Planning Armageddon: Britain, the United States and the Command of Western Nuclear Forces, 1945-1964 (London: Routledge, 2013)

U.S. Department of Energy, Linking Legacies: Connecting the Cold War Nuclear Weapons Production Process to Their Environmental Consequences (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, 1997)

Ken Young, The American Bomb in Britain: US Air Forces' Strategic Presence 1946–64.(Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2016)

Articles

Roger Dingman, “Atomic Diplomacy During the Korean War,” in International Security, Winter 1988/89 (Vol 13, No. 3), pp. 50-91

Ken Young, “A Most Special Relationship: The Origins of Anglo-American Nuclear Strike Planning,” in Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 5-31.

Unpublished Studies

Daniel R. Bilderback and Michael S. Binder, Early DoD Sited Nuclear Warhead Infrastructure USAC Legacy Project, University of South Carolina, Columbia, and Milsite Recon, Dallas, TX. (Prepared for the Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program, May 1999)

Kris C. Mitchell, Rhetoric to Reality: A Cold War Context Statement for the Pantex Plant, 1951-1991, (BWXT Pantex, Amarillo, Texas, 2001)

Bruce T. Verhaaren, A Cultural Resources Inventory of the Manzano Storage Area. Part II: Cold War Resources (Argonne, IL: Argonne National Laboratory, 1998).

Karen J. Weitze, Historic Facilities Groups at Air Combat Command Installations: A Comparative Evaluation of Selected Resources USAF-Wide. (Plano, TX: Geo-Marine, Inc., 2010).

Weitze, Karen J., National Stockpile Sites Alpha, Baker, Charlie, and Dog: Design and Development, 1946 1955. Draft, Government Only. Plano, Texas: Geo Marine, Inc., for the United States Army. May 2007.

Karen J. Weitze, Cold War Infrastructure for Air Defense: The Fighter and Command Missions. KEA Environmental, Inc., Sacramento, California, 1999.

Karen J. Weitze, Cold War Infrastructure for Strategic Air Command: The Bomber Mission, Prepared for Headquarters Air Force Air Combat Command and United States Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District KEA Environmental, Inc., Sacramento, California. 1999.

Karen J. Weitze, Cold War Properties at West Fort Hood, Texas: Research, Overview, and Preliminary Identification. (Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Austin, Texas. 2005)

Karen J. Weitze, National Stockpile Sites Alpha, Baker, Charlie, and Dog: Design and Development 1946–1955 [draft] (Weitze Research for Geo Marine, Inc., Plano, Texas. 2006)

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Kenneth E. Apt, Chemical Warfare Arms Control: Issues and Challenges. (Los Alamos, New Mexico: Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1988)

Leonard J. Arrington and Thomas G. Alexander, “Sentinels on the Desert: The Dugway Proving Ground (1942-1963) and Deseret Chemical Depot (1942-1955),” Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, Winter 1964, pp. 32-33.

Leo P. Brophy, “Origins of the Chemical Corps,” Military Affairs, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter 1956), pp. 217 226.

Leo P. Brophy and George J.B. Fisher, The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959) http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/010/10 1/CMH_Pub_10 1.pdf

Leo P. Brophy, Wydham Miles and Rexmond C. Cochrane, The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field (Washington , D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959) http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/010/10 2/CMH_Pub_10 2.pdf

Frederick J. Brown, Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968)

Eric Croddy and James J. Wirtz, Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History (ABC-CLIO, 2005)

Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret of Chemical and Biological Warfare. (New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1982)

Major Charles E. Heller, USAR, Chemical Warfare in World War I: The American Experience: 1917-1918 (Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute, September 1984) http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/LP10_ChemicalWarfareInWWI TheAmericanExperience_1917.pdf

Seymour Hersh, Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill Co., Inc., 1968)

Brooks E. Kleber and Dale Birdsell, The Chemical Warfare Service: Chemicals in Combat (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990) http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/010/10 3/CMH_Pub_10 3.pdf

Stephen McFarland , "Preparing For What Never Came: Chemical and Biological Warfare in World War II," Defense Analysis, 2 (June 1986)

Julian Perry Robinson, The United States Binary Nerve Gas Programme : National and International Implications (Brighton, England: Institute for the Study of International Organisation, 1975)

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Vol. I: The Rise of CB Weapons (New York: Humanities Press Inc., 1971)

Jonathan B. Tucker, War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al Qaeda, (New York: Anchor Books, 2007)

Christopher A. Warren, Chemical Warfare in the Inter-War Years, (Washington, D.C.: US Army Center for Military History, 2015) http://www.history.army.mil/events/ahts2015/presentations/seminar3/sem3_ChristopherWarren_ChemicalWarfare.pdf

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the US Biological Warfare Program,” in Susan Wright (ed.), Preventing a Biological Arms Race (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990)

Leo P. Brophy, Wydham Miles and Rexmond Cochrane, The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field (Washington , D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959)

George W. Christopher, Theodore J. Cieslak, Julie A. Pavlin and Edward M. Eitzen Jr. “Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective,” The Journal of the American Medical Association, 278 (5), August 6, 1997.

Eric Croddy and James J. Wirtz, Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History (ABC-CLIO, 2005)

Cole, Leonard A., Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988)

Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998)

Harris, Robert, and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret of Chemical and Biological Warfare. (New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1982)

Seymour Hersh, Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill Co., Inc., 1968)

Milton Leitenberg, “An Assessment of the Threat of the Use of Biological Weapons or Biological Agents.” Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland, September 2000.

John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “US Biological Warfare Planning and Preparedness: The Dilemmas of Policy,” in Erhard Geissler and John Ellis van Courtland Moon (eds), Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Edward Regis, The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project, (NY: Macmillan, 2000)

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Vol. I: The Rise of CB Weapons (New York: Humanities Press Inc., 1971)

Mark Wheelis, Lajos Rozsa, Malcolm Dando (eds.), Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)

Susan Wright (ed.), Biological Warfare and Disarmament (NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)

ARCHIVES

  • US National Archives, Legislative Archives Branch, Washington, D.C.
  • US National Archives. Military Records Branch, College Park, Maryland
  • US National Archives, Civilian Records Branch, College Park, Maryland
  • North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Archives, Brussels, Belgium
  • National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
  • National Archives of the Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands
  • National Archives of the UK, Kew, Great Britain
  • Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland
  • Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas
  • John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts
  • Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas
  • Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda, California
  • Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, Georgia
  • Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California
  • George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, Houston, Texas
  • William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Little Rock, Arkansas
  • Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.
  • DOD FOIA Reading Room, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
  • U.S. Army Center for Military History, Washington, D.C.
  • Naval Historical Center Operational Archives, Washington, D.C.
  • U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama
  • Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information, Washington, D.C.
  • Douglas MacArthur Library, Norfolk, Virginia (Douglas MacArthur Papers)
  • George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, Virginia (George C. Marshall Papers)
  • Mudd Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (George W. Ball Papers)
  • National Security Archive, Washington, D.C. (Chuck Hansen Collection)
  • Maryland Historical Trust, Annapolis, Maryland

 

GLOSSARY

AC

The abbreviation for Hydrogen Cyanide, a toxic cyanide gas that was stockpiled by the US Army during World War II and afterwards.

ACDA

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

ADM

Atomic demolition munition(s)

AEC

Atomic Energy Commission

AEDS

Atomic Energy Detection System (USAF)

AFAP

Artillery-fired atomic projectile (nuclear artillery shell)

AFSWP

Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (DOD)

AFTAC

Air Force Technical Application Center (USAF)

ASW

Anti-submarine warfare

Ball

George W. Ball Papers (Mudd Library, Princeton University)

BW

Biological warfare

CBW

Chemical and biological warfare

CEBAR

Chemical, biological and radiological warfare

CINCAL

Commander-in-Chief, Alaska

CL

The abbreviation for chlorine gas, a choking gas used extensively during World War I, which is identical to what is used for water purification today.

CG

The abbreviation for phosgene, another choking gas used in World War I and stockpiled extensively as a deterrent during World War II.

CK

The abbreviation for cyanogen chloride, a cyanide gas stockpiled extensively as a deterrent during World War II.

CMH

US Army Center for Military History

CONUS

Continental United States

CW

Chemical warfare

CWS

Chemical Warfare Service (U.S. Army, predecessor to US Army Chemical Corps)

DA

Department of the Army

DASA

Defense Atomic Support Agency (successor agency to AFSWP)

DDEL

Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (Abilene, Kansas)

DNA

Defense Nuclear Agency

DOD

Department of Defense

DNA

Defense Nuclear Agency (DOD)

DOE

Department of Energy

EPA

Environmental Protection Agency

ER

Enhanced radiation (neutron bomb)

FM

Fat Man (atomic bomb)

FOUO

For Official Use Only

FY

Fiscal year

GA

The abbreviation for Tabun, the first nerve agent developed secretly by Nazi German scientists in 1936.

GB

The abbreviation for Sarin, the standard non‑persistent nerve agent extensively stockpiled by the U.S. during the Cold War.

GBL

George H.W. Bush Library (Houston, Texas)

GCML

George C. Marshall Library (Lexington, Virginia)

GM

Guided missile

GRFL

Gerald R. Fprd Library (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

H

The abbreviation for mustard gas, manufactured by either the Levinstein or Thiodiglycol processes, a blister agent used in World War I and extensively stockpiled by the US and other countries from World War I to the present day.

Hansen

Chuck Hansen Collection (National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.)

HD

The abbreviation for distilled mustard, chemically identical to H, but purified further so that it can be stored longer before polymerizing.

HSTL

Harry S. Truman Library (Independence, Missouri)

HT

The abbreviation for mustard mixed with T, which is Bis 12 ( 2‑chloroethyl thio) ethyl ether, a compound used to depress the normal freezing point of mustard which is about 58°F.

JCAE

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (US Congress)

JCL

Jimmy Carter Library (Atlanta, George)

JFKL

John F. Kennedy Library (Boston, Massachusetts)

L

The abbreviation for Lewisite, an arsenic-based blister agent stockpiled extensively by the US during World War I and II.

LABS

Low Altitude Bombing System

LB

Little Boy (atomic bomb)

LBJL

Lyndon B. Johnson Library (Austin, Texas)

MACL

Douglas MacArthur Library (Norfolk, Virginia)

MED

Manhattan Engineering District (a/k/a Manhattan District or Manhattan Project)

MHT

Maryland Historical Trust (State of Maryland)

MLC

Military Liaison Committee (DOD)

NAC

National Archives of Canada

NANL

National Archives of the Netherlands

NAUK

National Archives of the UK

NAVFAC

Naval Facilities Command (US Navy)

NHC

Naval Historical Center (US Navy)

NIOSH

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

NPS

National Park Service

NRC

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

ORAU

Oak Ridge Associated Universities (DOE)

OSTI

Office of Scientific and Technical Information (Department of Energy)

RNL

Richard Nixon Library

RRL

Ronald Reagan Library

RW

Radiological Warfare

SAC

Strategic Air Command

SACEUR

Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (NATO)

SAS

Special Ammunition Storage

SFRC

Senate Foreign Relations Committee (US Congress)

SHAPE

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (NATO)

SIPRI

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

SW

Special weapons (DOD covername for nuclear weapons)

USAF

U.S. Air Force

USCINCEUR

Commander-in-Chief, Europe

USMC

U.S. Marine Corps

USN

U.S. Navy

VX

The abbreviation for the standard persistent nerve agent stockpiled by the U.S. during the Cold War. Now many other nations have stockpiled this lethal nerve agent, including North Korea.

WMD

Weapons of mass destruction

April 2, 1917

President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Imperial Germany. Three days later, Congress approved a declaration of war against Germany.

October 25, 1917

US Army began construction on a chemical weapons production plant 40 miles north of Baltimore, Maryland at a place called the Gunpowder Neck Reservation. The name of the plant was changed to the Gunpowder Reservation on April 2, 1918, then the Edgewood Arsenal on May 4, 1918.

June 28, 1918

The US Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) was formed.

November 1918

Armistice declared ending World War I.

December 7, 1941

Japanese forces attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. US enters World War II.

January 19, 1942

President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the production of an atomic bomb

February 12, 1942

Dugway Proving Ground, located 67 miles southwest of Salt Lake City Utah, was activated by the US Army to serve as the military’s primary chemical and biological weapons testing range.

June 17, 1942

President Roosevelt established the Manhattan Project

August 13, 1942

The Manhattan Project was formally initiated.

November 25, 1942

Los Alamos was selected as the site of America’s first nuclear weapons laboratory.

December 2, 1942

Enrico Fermi Achieves First Self Sustain Nuclear Chain Reaction

January 16, 1943

Hanford, Washington was selected as the location of the Manhattan Project’s principal plutonium production facility.

March 1943

Los Alamos laboratory was secretly established in New Mexico.

March 1945

The thermal diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee began highly enriched uranium production. Implosion bomb design approached completion; evidence that the design worked.

May 8, 1945

VE Day. Germany surrendered to Allies. Little Boy was ready except for its uranium 235 core. Estimated that enough uranium for the bomb would be available by August 1, 1945..

June 1945

Implosion core design confirmed.

July 1945

Casting of uranium 235 projectile for Little Boy was completed. Gadget (test weapon) was assembled on July 6th.  Little Boy shipped out on July 9th.

July 16, 1945

First U.S. atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Trinity Site  near Alamagordo, New Mexico. The explosive yield of the device was 20‑22 kilotons of TNT.

July 1945

Z‑Division of Los Alamos, the forerunner of Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), was established in New Mexico in conjunction with LANL. It served as the ordnance design, testing, and assembly arm of Los Alamos.

August 9, 1945

Little Boy (gun design) bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

August 16, 1945

Fat Man (implosion weapon) bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

March 21, 1946.

Continental Air Forces was re‑designated the Strategic Air Command (SAC). SAC was initially headquartered at Andrews Air Force Base then later is moved to Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska in November 1948.

June-July 1946

Operation CROSSROADS nuclear test series conducted at Bikini Atoll. Shot ABLE, an airdrop weapons effects test, was conducted on June 30 and BAKER, an underwater effects test, on July 24, 1946.

July 20, 1946

The Atomic Energy Act was passed by Congress, creating the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which replaced the military-run Manhattan Project.  Act transferred military control of nuclear weapons development activities to civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The bill was signed by President Truman on August 1, 1946.

August 2, 1946

Public Law 607 changed the name of the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service to the U.S. Army Chemical Corps.

January 1947

Great Britain/nuclear weapons. The Clement Atlee government secretly decided to proceed with a program to develop and build a British nuclear weapon.

January 1, 1947

AEC took charge of the nation's atomic energy program.

April 1947

Serial production of the Mk 3 nuclear bomb began at the Sandia Labs Tech Area II. Approximately 120 Mk 3 bombs were built between April 1947 and April 1949. The last Mk 3 bombs were retired from the stockpile in 1950.

April 3, 1947

President Truman was briefed by David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), on the state of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Truman was told that there were only components for seven complete nuclear weapons in the US arsenal.

Oct. 29, 1947.

Joint Strategic Survey Committee completed a report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff on “long range estimates of total military requirements of fissionable material.” Based on the report's recommendations, the JCS informed the chairman of the AEC that the military needs 400 atomic bombs of destructive power comparable to that used on Nagasaki. The JCS timetable, completed in early December 1947, called for all 400 bombs to be ready for use by January 1, 1953.

July 1948

SAC'S 509th Bombardment Group at Walker AFB, New Mexico, which was the nation's only force of nuclear-modified B-29 bombers, was placed on 24‑hour alert due to the Berlin crisis. AFSWP provided the US Air Force with three atomic bomb assembly teams.

July 23, 1948

Nuclear weapons. President Truman refused to transfer control of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile to the military despite the opposing recommendations from the Secretary of Defense, the JCS and all of the service chiefs.

December 1948

By December 1948, the USAF nuclear war plan had been expanded. It now called for nuclear strikes against 210 cities inside the USSR, with the top two urban targets being the cities of Moscow and Leningrad. These targets were chosen on the basis of the very limited intelligence information available at the time, which focused on destroying all large Soviet urban industrial concentrations and governmental control centers, wiping out the Soviet petroleum industry, and disrupting the Soviet railroad network and electric power grid. The prevailing theory was that the destruction of these targets “could well lead to Soviet capitulation and in any event should destroy their over-all capability for major offensive operations.”

March 19, 1949

The Mark 4 atomic bomb entered the U.S. nuclear stockpile, replacing the Mk 3 “Fat Man” bomb. First standard production model atomic bomb.

August 29, 1949

First Soviet atomic bomb (JOE 1) was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site (5025N 7750E) in Central Asia. The RDS-1 was essentially a copy of the U.S. ‘Fat Man’ bomb. The RDS-1 warhead yielded 22 kilotons.

Mid-September 1949

AFSA cryptanalyst Meredith Gardner decrypted portions of a June 15, 1944 KGB message sent from New York City to Moscow by the KGB Rezident, Stepan Apresyan, which revealed that the Soviets had a high-level spy, codenamed REST, within the Manhattan Project. It was not until September 26, 1949 that the FBI determined that REST was Dr. Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist and a senior member of the British team at Los Alamos from August 1944 until the end of 1945.

January 31, 1950

President Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb.

April 25, 1950

SAC’s Offtackle war plan called for nuclear strikes on 123 industrial and urban targets inside the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, most of which were located west of the Urals in the European portion of the USSR.

July 1950

Between July and December 1950, non-nuclear components for Mark 4 nuclear weapons were deployed to Goose Bay Air Base in Canada.

July 1, 1950

The US Army Chemical Corps reactivated the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah to test the new generation chemical and biological weapons then being hastily developed in the immediate aftermath of the North Korean invasion of South Korea.

July 10, 1950

The JCS formally approved the deployment to the UK of the non-nuclear components for 90 Mk 4 nuclear weapons.

July 31, 1950

President Harry S. Truman authorized the immediate deployment of 15 sets of non-nuclear components for Mk. 4 atomic bombs to the island of Guam, and 11 sets of non-nuclear components for Mk 4 bombs to the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea (CVB-43)

October 9, 1950

President Truman approved “a sharp increase in the production of fissionable materials and weapons.” Pursuant to this directive, a series of new fission weapons were ordered placed into production immediately, and bombs in the stockpile were ordered retrofitted with new equipment to improve their reliability and performance.

October 27, 1950

Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall authorized the construction of manufacturing facilities to produce sarin nerve gas agents and munitions.

November 29, 1950

Because of the deteriorating situation in Korea, USAF chief of staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg placed SAC on alert.

November 30, 1950

At a press conference, President Truman hinted that he might have to resort to the use of nuclear weapons in Korea given the dramatic change that had taken place in the military situation after the Chinese military intervention in the war.

November 30, 1950

FEAF commander General George Stratemeyer cabled USAF chief of staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg that because of the possibility of an all-out war with China, two more B-29 groups equipped with nuclear weapons should be deployed to the Far East to cover this contingency.

December 1, 1950

Headline on the front page of the New York Times read “President Warns We Would Use Atom Bomb in Korea, If Necessary; Soviet Vetoes Plea to Red China.”

December 4, 1950

USAF requested that the US Army Chemical Corps modify 1,800 leaflet bombs to carry a biological warfare agent designed to destroy crops.

December 15, 1950

USAF planners put the finishing touches on a new war plan that would required USAF bombers to drop 330 atomic bombs on large industrial and urban targets inside the USSR during the first 90 days of a war with the Soviet Union. The only significant problem with the plan was that there were no target folders for 89% of the designated targets inside the Soviet Union. Moreover, intelligence information on the state of Soviet air defenses and jamming capabilities was grossly deficient.

January 6, 1951

The commander of the Eighth U.S. Army in Korea, Lt. General Matthew B. Ridgway, asked General Douglas MacArthur for permission to use chemical weapons as a last resort measure in order to cover the potential withdrawal and evacuation of U.S. forces from Korea to Japan.

March 1, 1951

As of this date, the Soviet nuclear weapons arsenal consisted of only 15 RDS-1 nuclear bombs, all of which were stored at the KB-11 nuclear weapons laboratory and production facility at Sarov (covername: Arzamas-16) east of Moscow.

March 10, 1951

President Truman secretly endorsed the recommendation made by special committee of Dean Acheson, Louis Johnson, and Henry Smyth, to order the AEC to prepare for hydrogen bomb production.

April 5, 1951

Because of the dire security situation in Korea, the AEC was informed that a formal request from the JCS for the transfer of nine complete nuclear weapons to the military might come within the next 24-hours.

April 6, 1951

For the first time ever, President Truman authorized the transfer of control over complete nuclear weapons from the AEC to the military because of the military situation in the Far East.

April 24, 1951

The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) issued an order placing all nuclear stockpile managers and weapons assembly teams at the Sandia Base outside Albuquerque, New Mexico on alert for aircraft delivery of both nuclear insertable-core components and bomb assembly teams from the three national nuclear weapons storage sites within 12 hours of notification.

May 8, 1951

The military situation in Korea had deteriorated to the point that the commanding general of SAC, General Curtis E. LeMay, ordered his wing commander on Guam to prepare to conducted a nuclear attack on designated targets in the USSR and/or Manchuria.

May 9, 1951

The AEC tested a 214 kiloton nuclear device at Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific, which proved the feasibility of a thermonuclear device initiated by a fission detonation (a so-called “boosted fission” nuclear device).

July 28, 1951

Construction of the Rocky Flats plutonium fabrication plant began.

September 24, 1951

Exercise Hudson Harbor began in Korea. The exercise was a joint Far East Command-SAC operation designed to determine if nuclear weapons could be used in tactical support of the U.S. military in a wartime environment.

October 1, 1951

The AEC Pantex Plant outside Amarillo, Texas (Project ORANGE) was declared operational as a high explosives manufacturing and nuclear weapons final assembly plant, despite the fact that construction was still ongoing. Pantex conducted its first high explosives manufacturing operations on this day.

January 24, 1952

The US Army sent a Top Secret letter to FECOM reporting that Washington was “considering the advisability of deployment of toxic chemical munitions to overseas commands.”

January 27, 1952

President Truman wrote in his personal diary that “the proper approach now would be an ultimatum... informing Moscow that we intend to blockade the China coast from the Korean border to Indochina” and that “if there is further interference we shall eliminate any ports or cities necessary to accomplish our peaceful purposes.... This means all out war. It means that Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Peking, Shanghai, Port Arthur, Dairen, Odessa, Stalingrad and every manufacturing plant in China and the Soviet Union will be eliminated. This is the final chance for the Soviet government to decide whether it desires to survive or not.” (Cass Peterson, “Truman Idea: All-Out War Over Korea,” Washington Post, August 3, 1980, p. A1)

April 1952

The Air Force Council decided to push for the development of thermonuclear weapons that could be delivered to targets in the USSR by the B-36, B-47 and B-52 bombers that were then in SAC’s inventory or about to become operational.

May 19, 1952

In memo to the Department of the Army, FECOM in Tokyo requested “that stockpiles of toxic chemical agents and munitions be established in this command as early as possible.”

June 1952

The AEC’s second national nuclear weapons lab, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, was activated outside San Francisco, California.

September 10, 1952

President Truman approved the findings of a June 1952 National Security Council Study entitled “Agreed Concepts Regarding Atomic Weapons,” which transferred to DOD custody  all nuclear weapons deployed overseas. Custody of the remainder of the US nuclear weapons stockpile was retained by the AEC.

October 3, 1952

Operation HURRICANE. Great Britain exploded its first nuclear weapon, a prototype BLUE DANUBE warhead, on board the Royal Navy frigate HMS PLYM anchored off the Monte Bello Islands in western Australia. The warhead yielded 25 kilotons.

October 31, 1952

Operation IVY, Shot MIKE: U.S. exploded the first full‑scale thermonuclear device using cryogenic liquid deuterium at Eniwetok in the South Pacific. The device yielded 12 megatons. Because of the massive size of the device, this was not a deliverable weapon.

November 15, 1952.

Operation IVY, Shot KING: largest fission device ever detonated.

February 6, 1953

The commander of Far East Command (CINCFE), General Mark Clark, asked for the deployment of nuclear weapons to Japan to counter an anticipated major Chinese-North Korean offensive in Korea.

April 1953

British government asked the U.S. to sell it 2,500 tons of sarin nerve gas. The U.S. military denied the request because the US Army Chemical Corps had just begun manufacturing sarin weapons at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado, and the Pentagon wanted to fill up its own stockpile before selling some of these weapons to the UK.

May 1, 1953

Construction of the US Army Chemical Corps’ first sarin (GB) nerve gas production and weapons filling plant (covername was the “Incendiary Oil Plant”) at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal north of Denver, Colorado was completed. Construction cost of the GB production complex was $25 million, which was a vast sum of money at the time.

May 25, 1953

At 0831 hours Pacific Daylight Time on May 25, 1953, the U.S. Army fired the world's first atomic artillery projectile. Nineteen seconds later, the 280mm projectile detonated 500 feet above Frenchman Flats at the Nevada Test Site in Nevada. The resulting explosion yielded 15 kilotons (KT).

June 13, 1953

CINCEUR General Matthew Ridgway wrote the JCS asking them to deploy as soon as possible five 280mm nuclear-capable artillery battalions (20 artillery pieces) to West Germany.

July 1953

The newly completed facilities at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado began producing the first batches of sarin (GB) nerve gas. By the end of 1954, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal had produced approximately 500,000 gallons of sarin.

July 1953

Beginning in July 1953, and continuing through September 1953, SAC deployed non-nuclear components for atomic bombs to the three SAC air bases in French Morocco.

August 12, 1953

JOE- 4. Russians detonated their first RDS-6 thermonuclear weapon at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Center from the top of a 30-meter high tower, although the Russians did not publicly announce the event until eight days later on August 20, 1953. The test yielded approximately 400 kilotons.

September 25, 1953

Construction of the Rocky Flats plant outside Denver, Colorado was completed. Production of plutonium nuclear triggers for atomic bombs began shortly thereafter.

March 1954

A series of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific (Operation CASTLE) “confirmed the feasibility of developing small, lightweight, high-yield nuclear warheads.”

April 1954

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were notified that authorization had been obtained to deploy complete nuclear weapons to the United Kingdom and Morocco. At the same time the Secretary of State was asked by the Secretary of Defense to arrange for permission through diplomatic channels to store nuclear weapons in West Germany and Japan.

May 1954

The U.S. deployed complete nuclear bombs to three SAC air bases in French Morocco.

May 19, 1954

Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson approved the shipment of chemical weapons to the Far East.

June 23, 1954

The Secretary of Defense notified the Joint Chiefs of Staff that they were authorized to deploy and store both nuclear and non-nuclear components in West Germany; however, only non-nuclear components were authorized for deployment to Japan.

July 1954

U.S. deployed non-nuclear components of atomic bombs to Okinawa and complete nuclear bombs to Hawaii.

August 27, 1954

The US Army in Washington informed CINCFE in Tokyo that the “Secretary of Defense has approved the shipment of toxic chemical munitions to Far East Command (FEC). Advise when shipment desired.”

September 1954

Between September and November 1954, SAC deployed an unknown number of complete nuclear bombs to the UK for the first time.

December 1954

U.S. deployed complete nuclear bombs to Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa.

December 6, 1954

U.S. and Turkish air forces signed a secret agreement called the US-Turkish Air Technical Arrangement, which permitted the USAF to deploy nuclear weapons to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.”

March 1955

First U.S. nuclear weapons arrived in West Germany. Between March and May 1955, the U.S. deployed complete nuclear bombs to USAF air bases in West Germany.

April 1955

First nuclear warheads (Mk 9) for the 280mm artillery weapon and the MATADOR surface-to-surface missile were deployed to West Germany.

May 1955

Nuclear warheads for the Honest John rocket were deployed to West Germany.

June 1955

Nuclear warheads for the CORPORAL ballistic missile were deployed to West Germany.

November 22, 1955

JOE 19. Test of the first Soviet RDS-37 two-stage thermonuclear bomb was conducted at Semipalatinsk. Yield was 1.6 megatons.

December 1955

Between December 1955 and February 1956, the US deployed nuclear warheads for the 280mm atomic cannon to Okinawa. The warheads for this system were withdrawn less than five years later in June 1960.

1956

Weapon design improvements allow for sealed pit weapons to be introduced into the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

February 1956

First non-nuclear components for atomic bombs were deployed to the island of Iwo Jima south of Japan.

February 1956

A single Mark 15 bomb and associated nuclear capsules was deployed to the island of Chichi-Jima in the Bon Islands south of Japan.

March 1956

Between March and May 1956, nuclear warheads for the 8-inch howitzer were deployed to West Germany.

July 27, 1956

A SAC B-47 bomber crashed at RAF Lakenheath air base in England. While the bomber carried no nuclear weapons, it hit a  weapons storage bunker on the north side of the base where four Mk 6 nuclear bombs were stored in an igloo. One of the bombs sustained considerable damage that could conceivably have resulted in a nuclear detonation.

August 1956

U.S. deployed the first nuclear warheads for both the CORPORAL and HONEST JOHN ballistic missiles to Italy. These weapons were for U.S. use only.

September 1956

First complete nuclear bombs were deployed to the island of Iwo Jima south of Japan.

December 14, 1956

USAF chief of staff General Nathan Twining proposed to the Chief of the British Air Staff, Sir Dermot Boyle, that the U.S. would provide nuclear weapons to the RAF “in the event of general war and to coordinate the nuclear strike plans of the USAF and the RAF.” This agreement was memorialized in January 1957 in an exchange of letters between British Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys and American Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson.

February 20, 1957

State Department informed DOD that the Chinese Nationalist government (Chiang Kai-shek) had approved the deployment of US nuclear weapons to Taiwan.

March 1957

Between March and May 1957, atomic demolition munitions (ADM) were deployed to West Germany.

April 1957

U.S. deployed for the first time complete nuclear bombs to Italy (Aviano Air Base). These weapons were for U.S. use only.

May 1957

Production of the first sealed-pit implosion warheads for the MB-1 GENIE air-to-air rocket began at the Burlington Ordnance Plant in Iowa.

July 19, 1957

The USAF fired the first live nuclear-armed air-to-air nuclear defense rocket, the MB-1 GENIE, from an F-89J fighter interceptor flying over Yucca Flat, Nevada.

September 3, 1957

As of this date, the following nuclear delivery units were assigned to U.S. military forces in Europe: 6 CORPORAL missile battalions, 6 280mm atomic cannon battalions, 3 HONEST JOHN rocket battalions, 6 NIKE HERCULES surface-to-air missile battalions, 3 MATADOR missile squadrons, and 40 nuclear-capable fighter bomber squadrons. By 1960, the planned strength of these forces was: 5 CORPORAL missile battalions, 6 280mm artillery battalions, 3 HONEST JOHN battalions, 3 REDSTONE missile battalions, 6 LACROSSE rocket battalions, 10 NIKE HERCULES SAM battalions, 3 MATADOR squadrons, and 37 nuclear-capable fighter bomber squadrons.

November 8, 1957

Great Britain exploded its first successful hydrogen bomb, designated GRAPPLE X, at Christmas Island in the South Pacific. The weapon’s yield was 1.8 megatons.

December 1957

US deployed nuclear bombs and ASW depth bombs to the Philippines.

January 1958

First nuclear warheads for HONEST JOHN ballistic missiles, 280mm atomic cannon, 8-inch howitzer, and atomic demolition munitions (ADM), were deployed to South Korea.

January 1958

USAF deployed warheads for nuclear-capable Matador missiles to Taiwan.

February 1958

First nuclear bombs deployed to Thule AFB, Greenland for SAC. The bombs were withdrawn between October and December 1958.

March 1958

First nuclear bombs were deployed to the three SAC bomber bases in Spain - Torrejon, Zaragoza and Moron airfields.

March 1958

U.S. deployed the first nuclear bombs to South Korea.

May 1958

Between May and September 1958, nuclear warheads for the REDSTONE ballistic missile were deployed to West Germany.

August 5, 1958

The State Department authorized the US ambassador to Germany to inform West German Chancellor Adenauer that th U.S. was about to begin deployment chemical weapons to Germany.

August 22, 1958

President Eisenhower unilaterally halted all American nuclear weapons testing activities.

October 1958

Between October and December 1958, the U.S. transferred nuclear warheads for the THOR ballistic missile to the UK.

October 1958

USAF Master Sergeant Leander V. Cunningham, 41, one of six senior nuclear weapons technicians, locked himself inside a nuclear weapons storage facility at RAF Sculthorpe and threatened to detonate a nuclear weapon with his pistol. He later gave himself up. (Robert Jackson, Strike Force: The USAF in Britain Since 1948 (London: Robson Books, 1986), p. 110)

November 18, 1958

Working arrangement between Third Air Force and UK Air Ministry to provide nuclear weapons support to the RAF Canberra bomber force in West Germany was signed in London by USAF and RAF officials. (Cable, EC 9-5533, USCINCEUR to JCS WASH DC, October 16, 1959, Secret/NOFORN, RG-59, Entry 3096 Bureau of European Regional Affairs Political/Military Numeric Files 1953-1962, Box 6, File: 3-C/2 NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement UK, NA, CP)

December 1958

First THOR IRBM missiles arrived in Great Britain. By the end of the month 15 THOR missiles were in place in England. The first operational missile was not turned over to the Royal Air Force (RAF) until June 22, 1959.

January 1959

President Eisenhower directed the transfer of custody to the DoD of all nuclear weapons dispersed to the DOD, including those with yields in excess of 600 kilotons. Thus approximately 82 percent of the nuclear weapons stockpile was transferred to DoD custody.

January 1959

Between January and March 1959, the U.S. deployed atomic demolition munitions (ADM) to Italy. These weapons were to be used to blow up all of the Alpine passes linking Austria and Italy in wartime.

February 1959

First nuclear warheads for Nike-Hercules SAM missiles were deployed to Greenland.

February 1959

The U.S. deployed nuclear gravity bombs for the first time to Turkey. These weapons were for U.S. use only.

February 18, 1959

The Task Group of the Defense Science Board on Biological and Chemical Weapons, chaired by E. Duer Reeves, executive vice president of Esso Standard Oil Company [now ExxonMobil], submitted a classified report which deemed the current US Army chemical and biological warfare program “inadequate,” and called for an accelerated research program as well as for greater effort in the development of new chemical and biological weapons.

February 28, 1959

US and Turkish armies signed a secret agreement which permitted the US Army to deploy HONEST JOHN nuclear warheads to Turkey.

March 27, 1959

CINCUSAFE and the German Minister of Defense exchanged diplomatic notes calling “for the establishment of a NATO Special Ammunition storage program in Germany” for nuclear support for nuclear-capable West German Air Force (Luftwaffe) strike fighter units. Within the US government this was known as the WAGON TRAIN agreement.

April 1959

Between April and June 1959, nuclear warheads for the NIKE-HERCULES SAM system were deployed to West Germany.

May 5, 1959

By an exchange of notes signed in Ankara, the US and Turkish governments completed a 144b agreement entitled the Agreement on Atomic Energy: Cooperation for Mutual Defense Purposes. The agreement took effect on July 27, 1959.

May 1959

U.S. deployed nuclear warheads for Honest John rockets to Turkey.

June 27, 1959

The House Committee on Science and Astronautics published a report entitled Research in CBR (Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare), which urged that the military place greater emphasis on and devote greater resources to CW-BW research and development, as well as place greater emphasis on intelligence collection on foreign activities (i.e. Soviet and Chinese) efforts in the BW-CW field.

Fall 1959

US secretly deployed a small amount of toxic chemical munitions, consisting mostly artillery shells filled with mustard gas (HD) and sarin (GB) nerve gas, to West Germany without getting the formal permission of the German government.

October 1959

Between October and December 1959, nuclear warheads for the MACE surface-to-surface missile were deployed to West Germany.

October 28, 1959

U.S. and Turkey signed an agreement for the deployment of 15 Jupiter ballistic missiles and their nuclear warheads to Turkey. The operational date of the first launch site was tentatively set for June 1, 1961.

October 31, 1959

A Series D Atlas ICBM went on alert at Vandenberg AFB. This was the first American ICBM equipped with a nuclear warhead to be placed on alert status .

December 30, 1959

First Polaris ballistic missile submarine became operational, the USS George Washington. First successful launch of a Polaris missile took place several months later.

December 30, 1959

The US and Greek governments signed a  nuclear stockpile agreement which permitted the U.S. military to begin construction of nuclear weapons storage and support facilities in Greece.

January 1960

Between January and March 1960, the U.S. deployed nuclear bombs to Taiwan. The bombs were not withdrawn until July 1974.

January 26, 1960

The U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Chris Young, and a senior Dutch government official signed an Atomic Stockpile Agreement in The Hague allowing for the storage of U.S. nuclear weapons in the Netherlands.

February 13, 1960

France exploded its first nuclear device at Reganne in southern Algeria.

April 1960

Between April and June 1960, nuclear warheads for the LACROSSE missile system were deployed to West Germany.

April 1960

U.S. deployed nuclear bombs to the Netherlands for the first time. All these nuclear weapons went to Volkel Air Base, home of the RDAF 311 Squadron.

May 27, 1960

A group of mid-level Turkish military officers staged a bloodless coup d’etat and overthrew the civilian Menderes government.

January 1961

The JCS authorized U.S. Pacific Command (CINCPAC) to store up to 16,000 tons of mustard gas (HD) and GB (sarin) and VX nerve gas weapons on Okinawa. But no one thought to inform the Japanese government because the United States then controlled the island.

April 1961

The newly completed VX nerve gas manufacturing plant at Newport, Indiana began production, and by August 1961 was operating at full capacity.

June 1961

US deployed nuclear warheads for HONEST JOHN ballistic missiles to the Netherlands for the first time.

July 1961

Between July and September 1961, nuclear-armed FALCON missiles were deployed to West Germany.

September 1, 1961

U.S. nuclear weapons testing resumes

October 1961

Between October and December 1961, nuclear-armed DAVY CROCKETT tactical missiles were deployed to West Germany. They were withdrawn in August 1967.

October 1961

The U.S. deployed nuclear warheads for one squadron of Jupiter IRBMs to Cigli Air Base, Turkey. The missiles and warheads were withdrawn less than two years later in June 1963.

December 1961

U.S. deployed nuclear warheads for HONEST JOHN ballistic missiles to Greece for the first time.

January 13, 1962

U.S. and Italy signed a bilateral NATO Atomic Stockpile Agreement, which was effected by an exchange of notes between the charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Rome and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Segni.

April 1962

Between April and June 1962 the US deployed nuclear warheads for 8-inch howitzers to Greece.

May 1962

The US Army Chemical Corps was disestablished and its functions were subsumed under the newly created Army Materiel Command (AMC).

July 1962

Between July and September 1962, nuclear-armed BULLPUP air-to-surface missiles were deployed to West Germany.

October 1962

Between October and December 1962, the U.S. deployed W33 nuclear warheads for the 8-inch howitzer to the Netherlands.

April 1963

Between April and June 1963, nuclear warheads for the SERGEANT ballistic missile were deployed to West Germany.

April 1963

Operation YBA. First of three bulk shipments of chemical weapons to Okinawa by the U.S. Army. USNS BROSTRUM transported projectiles, rockets, mines and bulk containers filled with sarin (GB), VX persistent nerve agent and distilled mustard gas (HD) chemical agents from the Concord Naval Weapons Station in California to the Chibana Army Depot on Okinawa. A total of 11,000 tons of mustard gas and nerve agents were shipped to Okinawa by the end of 1963 and stored at the Chibana Army Ammunition Depot near the air approach to Kadena Air Base.

August 5, 1963

United States and the Soviet Union signed the first limited test ban treaty prohibiting underwater, atmospheric, and outer space nuclear weapons testing.

September 28, 1963

Canada signed an agreement which permitted the US to store nuclear air-to-air missiles at Goose Bay and Harmon air bases for use by US air defense units. The US ambassador signed the agreement on September 30, 1963. (John Clearwater, U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada (Toronto: The Dundurn Group, 1999), pp. 225-227)

October 1963

Between October and December 1963 the US deployed nuclear warheads for NIKE HERCULES SAMs to Greece for the first time.

November 1963

U.S. deployed nuclear bombs to Belgium for the first time.

January 1964

Between January and March 1964, the U.S. deployed nuclear warheads for the BOMARC surface-to-air missile to Canada.

January 1964

Between January and March 1964, the U.S. deployed the first nuclear warheads for the SERGEANT ballistic missile and 8-inch howitzers to Italy.

April 1964

Between April and June 1964, nuclear warheads for the PERSHING I ballistic missile were deployed to West Germany.

October 16, 1964

China exploded its first nuclear weapon at Lop Nor in western China.

February 1965

Nuclear warheads for 155mm howitzers were deployed for the first time to West Germany.

April 3, 1965

Last SAC B-47 Reflex nuclear alert bomber in Britain, a B-47E bomber belonging to the 380th Bomb Wing, left RAF Brize Norton and returned to the U.S.

May 1965

The U.S. deployed nuclear-armed MB-1 GENIE air-to-air missiles to Canada.

May 23, 1965

State Department began negotiations with the British government to store nuclear depth bombs for Dutch ASW aircraft at RAF St. Mawgan in Cornwall.

June 1965

The U.S. deployed the first nuclear warheads for 8-inch howitzers to Turkey.

June 11, 1965

Memo reported some dissent inside the White House NSC about the latest dispersal plan for nuclear weapons. “This is another instance in which we are going down the slippery slope of initiating the dispersal of more tactical nuclear weapons without a very clear idea of how and when they would be used. However, in view of the unanimous support of this plan by Defense, State and AEC, there seems to be little basis for withholding approval.

July 1965

The U.S. deployed nuclear-armed FALCON air-to-air missiles to Canada.

September 27, 1965

The AEC’s Clarksville Modification Center at Fort Campbell, Kentucky was closed and its nuclear weapons modification/repair mission was transferred to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.

October 11, 1965

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio. A C-124 transport aircraft containing nuclear weapons components and a dummy training unit caught fire while being refueled. The fire started at the aft end of the refueling trailer and destroyed the aircraft's fuselage. There were no casualties and the resultant radiation hazard was reportedly minimal

November 23, 1965

A New York Times article revealed that U.S. nuclear weapons were mounted on F-100 and F-104 QRA fighter bomber aircraft belonging to nine NATO nations - Great Britain, Belgium, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, West Germany, and Turkey. (John W. Finney, “9 Allied Planes Have Atom Arms,” New York Times, November 23, 1965; John W. Finney, “We Are Already Sharing the Bomb,” New York Times, November 28, 1965)

November 28, 1965

A New York Times article revealed that more than 5,000 tactical nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe, and that this number would be increased by about 20% in the coming six months. This would represent a doubling of the number of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe over the past five years. (H. Tanner, “5,000 A-Warheads Stored for NATO, McNamara Says,” New York Times, November 28, 1965)

January 17, 1966

A SAC B-52 bomber carrying four Mark 28 hydrogen bombs collided in midair with a KC-135 tanker near the coastal village of Palomares in southeastern Spain. Of the four H-bombs aboard, two weapons' high explosive material exploded on ground impact, releasing radioactive materials, including plutonium, over the fields of Palomares. Approximately 1,400 tons of contaminated soil and vegetation were later taken to the United States for storage at an approved site. A third nuclear weapon fell to earth but remained relatively intact; the last one fell into the ocean.

April 3, 1966

US Army and Dutch Air Force signed an agreement whereby the U.S. agreed to provide nuclear warheads for the RDAF’s two Nike-Hercules SAM groups (Groepen Geleide Wapens - GGW) that had been based in West Germany since they were formed in 1961-1963.

April 8, 1966

The AEC’s Medina Modification Center in San Antonio, Texas was closed and its nuclear weapons modification/repair mission was transferred to the Pantex Plant outside Amarillo, Texas.

March 25, 1967

The New York Times reported that the US Army had been ordered to withdraw all DAVY CROCKETT tactical nuclear weapons from West Germany. The last of these weapons were withdrawn from Germany in August 1967. (New York Times, March 25, 1967, p. 10)

April 6, 1967

The New York Times reported that Turkey had requested a special arrangement for predelgated control of atomic demolition munitions (ADM) so that they could be used quickly to block key mountain passes between Turkey and the Soviet Caucasus. (“Turkey Requests Leeway in Using Atom Land Mines,” New York Times, April 6, 1967, p. 1)

April 21, 1967

In the course of a coup d’etat, Greek military units surrounded the U.S. Army nuclear weapons storage depot at Elevsis outside Athens that was operated by the 558th US Army Artillery Group. The Greek troops were withdrawn after protests from the U.S. embassy. (“Symington Finds Flaws in NATO’s Warhead Security; Greek Incident Hinted,” New York Times, November 23, 1970; S.R. Davis, “How Safe Are NATO Missiles? Greek A-Incident Surfaces,” Christian Science Monitor, December 8, 1970)

June 14, 1967

Operation YZU. Bulk shipment of 155mm projectiles filled with GB and VX nerve gas was sent by merchant ship from the Sunny Point Naval Pier, Sunny Point, North Carolina to Europe for storage in West Germany. All of the weapons were deployed to NATO Site 59 outside the town of Clausen in West Germany, where the U.S. Army custodial unit was the 636th Ordnance Company (EOD).

June 17, 1967

China detonated its first thermonuclear weapon at the Lop Nor nuclear test site in western China. The 3.3 megaton device was air dropped by a TU-16 bomber.

July 27, 1967

Canada signed an agreement which permitted the USN to store nuclear ASW bombs at Argentia air base for use by US naval units. The US ambassador signed the agreement the same day. (John Clearwater, U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada (Toronto: The Dundurn Group, 1999), pp. 233-235)

September 1967

Agreement signed whereby the U.S. Army agreed to provide the Dutch I Corps in West Germany with Atomic Demolition Munitions (ADM) support. The Dutch created a special engineer unit designated 111 Peleton Speciale Opdrachten that was trained in the use of ADMs in wartime. Initially the weapons were stored at Hanau, then later moved to a depot north of the town of Lahn [at Herbornseelbach]. (Lt. General Dirk Starink (Air Force, ret.), “De nuclearisering van de krijgsmacht” (“The Nuclearization of the Armed Forces”), in B. Schoenmaker and J.A.M.M. Janssen (eds.), In de Schaduw van de Muur. Maatschappij en Krijgsmacht rond 1960 (The Hague: SDU, 1997), p. 92)

January 1968

US transferred nuclear depth bombs to the UK for the first time. These weapons were positioned at Naval Aviation Weapons Facility RAF St. Mawgan in Cornwall and RAF Machrihanish in Scotland.

January 21, 1968

Four Mark 28 1.1 megaton thermonuclear bombs were destroyed in a fire after the B-52 bomber carrying them crashed approximately seven miles southwest of the runway at Thule Air Base in Greenland.

February 1968

The U.S. deployed nuclear depth bombs to Canada.

February 27, 1968

A technical agreement was signed by the US and Dutch navies regarding technical modifications to the SP-2H Neptune maritime patrol aircraft belonging to the RDN 320 Squadron at Valkenburg to allow them to deliver nuclear depth bombs. The agreement also called for training of the Dutch crews in nuclear delivery techniques. From 1969 onwards the US Navy allocated a small number of B-57 nuclear depth bombs to the Dutch navy.

March 13-14, 1968

A A-4 Skyhawk fighter bomber sprayed VX nerve agent on a target area about 27 miles west of Skull Valley inside the boundaries of the Dugway Proving Group in Utah. The nerve gas, however, drifted into adjoining private property, killing more than 6,000 sheep belonging to local ranchers. The incident created a huge public uproar, which was made worse by the fact that the US Army tried to keep suppress all information about the cause of the incident. It was not until January 1998 that the Army finally admitted that nerve gas had killed the 6,000 sheep.

August 24, 1968

France exploded a megaton-range hydrogen bomb at Mururoa Atoll.

October 16, 1968

Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford publicly revealed that the U.S. had 7,200 tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe. (B. Horton, “US Gives NATO New Nuclear Plan,” San Francisco Examiner, October 16, 1968)

April 30, 1969

Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird launched a comprehensive review of all US government biological and chemical weapons policies and programs.

June 1969

Production began of the first MIRVed nuclear warheads meant for use on the Minuteman III and Poseidon ballistic missiles.

July 8, 1969

During a routine cleaning of bombs and artillery shells filled with nerve gas at the Chibana Ammo Depot on Okinawa, a leak occurred in a 500-pound bomb which injured 24 U.S. personnel. Press reports about the incident prompted protests and the Japanese government demanded that the weapons be removed immediately from Okinawa. Within a week it was announced that the chemical weapons would be removed.

August 1969

Congress unilaterally initiated a moratorium on the production of new chemical weapons.

August 28, 1969

The U.S. chemical weapons stockpile consisted of approximately 35,000 agent tons of bulk and filled chemical munitions, primarily consisting of sarin (GB) and VX nerve agents and older mustard gas (HD). A one to two week operational supply of 1,585 agent tons of chemical munitions was stored on Okinawa but scheduled to be moved to Guam; and a five-day operational supply of chemical munitions (488 agent tons) was stored at Clausen in West Germany.

November 25, 1969

President Nixon issued his "Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs," which reaffirmed the US government’s commitment to not be the first nation to use chemical weapons, and committed the US government to submitting the 1925 Geneva Protocol to the US Senate for ratification. Nixon also announced the discontinuance of the United States Biological weapons program as well as the cessation of the production of BW munitions.

February 14, 1970

The United States extended its ban on biological weapons to include all forms of biological weapons..

May 1, 1970

The U.S. had nuclear weapons deployed in 12 foreign countries, as well as a number of foreign territories and possessions controlled by the U.S.

May 9, 1970

President Nixon signed NSDM 59, which authorized an increase in the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to 27,173 warheads, an increase of 1,139 nuclear weapons over the number authorized the previous fiscal year. Another directive signed on this day, NSDM 60, authorized the deployment of 8,951 of these nuclear weapons to overseas sites. (Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (NY: Summit Books, 1983), p. 197)

January 1972

Between January and March 1972, the U.S. deployed the first nuclear depth bombs to Italy (NAS Sigonella on Sicily).

April 10, 1972

The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union signed "The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction" (BWC). Parties to the convention undertook not to develop, produce, stockpile, or acquire biological agents or toxins, as well as related weapons and means of delivery.

June 1972

Nuclear-armed WALLEYE air-to-surface PGM missiles were deployed to West Germany.

June 1972

All U.S. nuclear weapons were removed from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa just before the island reverted back to the control of Japan.

September 1972

In the aftermath of the Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes, the Secretary of Defense ordered the JCS and the military services to conduct a worldwide survey of the security of U.S. nuclear weapons deployed overseas. As a result of these surveys a number of nuclear weapons storage sites in vulnerable locations were closed and the security at a number of other sites were strengthened.

June 1973

The U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile consisted of 26 different types of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in 57 different modifications or variants. (Hearings, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Military Applications of Nuclear Technology, Part III, 93rd Congress (22 May, 9 June 1973), p. 3)

June 1973

Decision was made to close the AEC facility in Burlington, Iowa and to transfer its nuclear weapons manufacturing operations to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The base was not actually closed down until July 1, 1975.

January 1974

Between January and March 1974, nuclear warheads for the LANCE ballistic missile were deployed to West Germany.

July 1974

Last U.S. nuclear bombs were withdrawn from Tainan Air Base, Taiwan and moved to Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

July 20, 1974

U.S. Air Force custodial units in Greece and Turkey pulled all nuclear weapons off Greek and Turkish fighter bombers standing Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) alert, and the 558th US Army  Artillery Group took all nuclear warheads off all the Greek NIKE-HERCULES SAM missiles deployed around Athens. Detachments from the U.S. Marine BLT on US Navy Sixth Fleet warships in the eastern Mediterranean were prepared to fly into Turkey in helicopters to secure the nuclear weapons if the Turkish military threatened to seize the weapons storage sites. (“Cooling Off the Nukes,” Newsweek, August 12, 1974, p. 17; John W. Finney, “Cyprus Crisis Stirred U.S. to Protect Atom Weapons,” New York Times, September 9, 1974, p. 10; Leslie H. Gelb, “U.S. Weighs Status of Nuclear Warheads in Greece,” New York Times, September 11, 1974, p. 12; S.V. Roberts, “Greek See Worse Ties If U.S. Pulls Out A-Arms,” New York Times, September 12, 1974; Drew Middleton, “Could a U.S. Atom Bomb be Stolen?,” New York Times, September 22, 1974; John W. Finney, “U.S. Delaying Removal of Warheads,” New York Times, July 24, 1975)

March 26, 1975

The United States ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, signifying that it had destroyed all of its biological weapons.

August 25, 1975

Over 6,000 US Army and USAF personnel were engaged in proving nuclear weapons support to NATO countries at an annual cost of $83.8 million, not including operations and maintenance costs or host nation financing.

January 1976

Between January and February 1976, the U.S. deployed the first nuclear warheads for the LANCE ballistic missile to Italy.

March 21, 1976

Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter stated publicly that there were about 700 U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea. (“The Candidate on the Issues: An Interview,” Washington Post, March 21, 1976)

June 1977

Last nuclear weapons were removed from Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

June 7, 1977

The Washington Post published an article reporting that the U.S. intended to deploy an enhanced radiation version of the LANCE nuclear warhead to Europe. This weapon became known as the Neutron Bomb. (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977-1981 (NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983), p. 301)

August 1, 1977

The Department of Energy was established in Washington, D.C., replacing ERDA.

November 1, 1979

The New York Times reported that about half of the 6,000 American tactical nuclear weapons then deployed in Western Europe were held under a so-called “dual key” control system. (“Europe Now Shuns Its Nuclear Trigger,” New York Times, November 1, 1979, p. A3)

November 13, 1979

The US Army formally asked President Jimmy Carter for permission to begin construction of a $170 million facility at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas that would produce a new generation of 155mm artillery shells filled with binary nerve gas. (Richard Burt, “Army Seeking Approval for New Nerve Gas Weapons,” New York Times, November 14, 1979, p. A19)

December 12, 1979

NATO secretary general Joseph Luns issued a communique announcing that NATO had approved the deployment to Western Europe of 108 PERSHING II missile launchers and 464 Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM) to counter the buildup of Soviet SS-20 IRBMS.

October 16, 1980

China conducted the world's last atmospheric nuclear weapons test at Lop Nor

November 15, 1983

The New York Times reported that a confidential DOD report to Congress showed that there were 5,845 American nuclear warheads deployed in Western Europe. (Richard Halloran, "Report to Congress Provides Figures for Nuclear Arsenal," New York Times, November 15, 1983, p. A15)

January 1, 1984

British government announced that the first squadron of 16 GLCM launchers based at Greenham Common Air Base were now operational.

June 27, 1984

U.S. announced the first operational deployment of SLCMs.

March 10, 1985.

Chemenko died; Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in the USSR

December 1987

First M687 155mm binary chemical artillery shell was built at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, ending the U.S. government’s 19-year moratorium on building new chemical weapons.

December 8, 1987

The United States and the USSR signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The treaty pledged the two nations to remove all Pershing II, GLCMs, and SS-20 intermediate-range (620-3,415 statute miles) missiles from Europe.

December 26, 1987

The Soviet Foreign Ministry announced that the USSR's chemical weapons stockpile consisted of approximately 50,000 tons of bulk toxic chemical agents and munitions, which was considerably less than U.S. intelligence estimates at the time, which held that the Soviets had as much of 700,000 tons of chemical weapons in its arsenal.

July 31, 1991

The U.S.-Soviet START arms control agreement was signed

September 27, 1991

President George H.W. Bush announced that with the signing of the START Treaty, the U.S. would accelerate the dismantling of land-based ICBMs; all USAF bombers were removed from alert status; and development of the MX mobile missile was stopped. Finally, all ground-launched tactical nuclear weapons would be withdrawn and dismantled. In sum, 2,000 nuclear weapons were ordered removed from active service and dismantled. First priority was the removal of artillery-fired atomic projectiles (AFAPs) from South Korea.

November 5, 1991

President Bush signed National Security Directive No. 64 (NSD-64), which cleared the way for the return to the U.S. of all land-based US Navy air-delivered and sea-based tactical nuclear weapons, the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from Korea, and deep cuts in the size of the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stockpile in Europe. Removal of nuclear weapons from South Korea was to commence almost immediately.

December 1991

The last nuclear weapons were removed from Kunsan Air Base in South Korea.

May 10, 1992

Secretary of Energy Watkins testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that for the first time since 1945, the United States was not building any nuclear weapons.

June 30, 1992

USAF transport aircraft completed the withdrawal of U.S. stockpiles overseas of nuclear artillery shells, Lance missile warheads, and naval depth charges in support of President George Bush's Nuclear Forces Initiative.

September 23, 1992

The last U.S. underground nuclear weapons test, codenamed JULIN DIVIDER, took place at the Nevada Test Site

January 3, 1993

Presidents George Bush of the United States and Boris Yeltsin of Russia sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), the most far-reaching nuclear arms reduction pact in history. The agreement calls for the United States and Russia to eliminate all ICBMs carrying multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles and reduce the number of nuclear weapons carried by their bombers.

March 1, 2000

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was established under the Department of Energy (DOE) to maintain the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Today the NNSA consists of 2,300 U.S. government employees and approximately 23,000 contract workers. NNSA’s annual budget is $12.6 billion (Fiscal Year 2016)

December 12, 2003

The last W‑79 nuclear artillery shell in the US nuclear weapons stockpile was dismantled at the Pantex Plant outside Amarillo, Texas.

June 29, 2006

Last W56 warhead was dismantled at the Pantex Plant

June 30, 2006

NNSA completed the B61 warhead refurbishment program at the Pantex Plant.

December 24, 2008

The last M23 land mine containing VX nerve agent was destroyed by the US Army at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Anniston, Alabama.

January 9, 2009

The last B61 nuclear bomb refurbished warhead was returned to the U.S. nuclear stockpile, completing an eight‑year effort. This program extended beyond their original intended life both the B61 mod 7 and mod 11 strategic bombs, and was completed almost one year early.

February 23, 2009

The first refurbished W76 TRIDENT missile warhead was returned to service with the U.S. Navy.

May 15, 2011

The last of the bulk mustard gas stored at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Tooele, Utah was destroyed, a milestone for the facility that has been incinerating aging munitions since 1996. The remaining stores of lewisite and GA toxic agents were expected be destroyed by February 2012.  (Christopher Smart, “Last of Bulk Mustard Gas Destroyed at Deseret Chemical Depot,” The Salt Lake Tribune, May 16, 2001)

January 2012

The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) announced that it had destroyed almost 90% of the Nation’s chemical weapons stockpile - 27,474 tons of chemical agents and more than 2.3 million filled munitions.

nuke chron

http://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/docs/NuclearChronology_June2016.pdf

 

Cite this page

Weapons of Mass Destruction, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017 <http://brc.brill.semcs.net/browse/weapons-of-mass-destruction>